confucius say...

Hmm okay poor me now, confused.
Mind you that's nothing new, I'll explain.
Went to see X-men 3 with my colleague from work Susan, had a chinese before it as well.
Good film and a nice relaxing evening, or so I thought...
Now here is what confuses me..
Nothing said at the time when we got back to my car, switch on phone this morning,
get a message to the effect "hope you enjoyed the film, that will be the last time we go to the cinema"
I have an idea why and it's all to do with "work". I mean she gets a hard time about when we go out, I get it as well but not as bad. Another reason is maybe our "accounts person" who is also MD's wife, gotta love family run companies...
She seems to like to pick fault with ANYTHING and it's never her fault it's susans or mine since I do check in stuff as it's delivered - check that the what's on the note is what's in the box (I can do no more than that since I don't got the order notes as someone else does them).
I'm doing my best, doing what I think is wanted of me as fast as is possible, multitasking, attempting to make good time management etc..
I'll stop there *massages temples to calm self*
Anyone help me out here? Im confused....
Additional for Junebugg / Heather:
No I didn't pinch her hinnie, what you take me for...
I don't talk over a movie, i consider it rude.
She only ever wanted me as a friend, I have told her how i felt before, we both agreed to be friends (see a Feburary post i know i did one - i think)
She doesn't have much self confidence and well all the put downs are finally getting to her I think.
It as if im at the gates of an ancient city, asking to be allowed in, and being denied access.
I hope this clarifies if not re-comment..

Get Well Soon Heather..

Go visit Heather and wish her a speedy recovery :). I think the 6 flags took it out of her for sure..
Get Well Soon Heather.

A Film Review: The Da Vinci Code

I'm not gonna reveal too much incase ya wanna go see it, I'll just reveal enough as make you interested.
Hmm Well Im sure you've all seen the clip in the gallery with the dead dude, Yeah?
I tell you about him he's the curator of the gallery and the grandmaster of a secret organisation that's protecting something that well let's just say could chance the way people assess faith.
He's dead, the cop who is sent to look into the murder is naturally part of another secret organisation that wants to remove this secret and keep they "myth" alive that jesus died and had no kids (i.e not mortal like man) and he wants to arrest the main character for murder but has to do it convincingly, put into the mix the dead dude's "grand-daughter" I say it like that as well she isn't, any such thing, but she knows codes and cyphers and between them, they need to escape the gallery and take the clues given by the grandfather, written in UV pen, and code and track them across paris, ,london, and eventually Scotland. Of course they have to stay one step ahead of the law, as well as this albino monk, who is a little "nutz" and who also shot the grandfather in the first place. Oh yeah he works for the same organisation as the police officer. Now add in an expert in all things pretaining to both organisations who the lead trust and well you have it or do you. All of course is not as it seems, never quite know who you can trust and who you can't.
All this to protect a tomb, but who's tomb and why.. I hope this snippet has given you enough insight as to want to watch the film without giveing too much away...
Thanks to those who have voted so far, many thanks to DB & Junebugg for leaving comments (I should have said I'd like comments as well :P - maybe I did)

Happy Anniversary Moogie

Incase some of you didn't know it's Moogie & Ward's Wedding Anniversary Today ;)
So go pay 'em a visit and say Hi etc..
Oh Yeah Happy Anniversary to the 2 of you :D

The Scottish Cup Final

What can I say, little Grenta FC came so far, and took the opposition all the way in the final, it went to a penalty shoot out which Hearts won 4-2..
I did post about this ages ago, but Gretna is like in "Division 2", Hearts they are 2 leagues up in The "Scottish Premier League", and they took 2nd place in that, so you can see it's quite a feat for gretna to even be in the Final let alone take it to a penalty shoot-out.
Mind you Gretna can go away from this final knowing they took the game to their opponants and because they are in the final and due to some rules they are in the UEFA cup next year, okay it's the qualifing rounds but hey they are there that and they will be playing "Division 1" football next year as they basically stormed through Division 2. Full Story on BBC SPORT.

I just realised!

Well i was looking a Wahwer's Blog, and it got me thinking when is my "blogger birthday", my 1st offical blogspot post can be found here. I did how ever import all my old DD entries the ones that survived a DB crash (and a poor revcovery due to the fact that the site admin had to do it solo with only DD diariests giving him a had, so a few entries got lost in the recovery (some of the most painful got lost :|, unfortunatly - I can't remember what I wrote then) so that technically means it's the 13th June, as seen here, I'll let you make up your mind.

A film Review: Mission Impossible 3....

What can I say,
plot impossible, improbable but some how it still works, they tech-geek from MI & MI:2 well lets just say I want his toys! Oh yeah it also brings a whole new meaning to the phrase "bullet to the brain" - go see for the explaination of it. Also don't ya just hate it when there is a mole in the works, the one who you think ya can trust, I mean really trust and then he turns out to be working for the guy your trying so hard to kill. It's a good film, go see it if you've not already..

This is another one to go in the DVD collection, which Im gonna have to STOP adding to as well last count 130+ DVD's that fill a small bookcase that i did buy to store books but well it now stores DVD's as it's just about the right depth and it's spilled over into a bigger bookcase I got beside it - they kinda sit in one corner of my room which I think needs a redesign / re decorate but hmm not sure on colors / exact what I want, it's currently part mahogony effect, part beech wood effect, with silver and a pine lamenate floor to boot. Walls well they've not been redone for oh a good few years but the effect still works well in here for some reason, it's half lemon, half lemon with a blue/red/green stripe down it, and a blue/green/red pattern on a lemon background as the border between, it works well. I got a look in my head but I can't see it working for some reason!

Me, Myself and I

In a completely blatent rip off / borrow from Heather
I AM: man.
I WANT: more time to do things.
I WISH: I knew what I know now, back when I was younger.
I HATE: feeling vulnerable, although it sometimes nice for someone else to be strong for me.
I MISS: the years I lost doing not much trying to figure myself out.
I FEAR: very little, but fear itself.
I HEAR: nothing much.
I WONDER: what I will be when I grow up.
I REGRET: saying a few rash words many years ago .
I AM NOT: weak, altough you'd never know, inner strength hides well.
I DANCE: alone and not very often or well.
I SING: quietly to myself.
I CRY: fairly easily.
I AM NOT ALWAYS: strong, i do sometimes do silly and foolish things.
I MAKE WITH MY HANDS: gifts of love.
I WRITE: because someome needs to figure out what my life is, just to make sure I got it right.
I CONFUSE: many people.
I NEED: to be loved, i wear my heart on my sleeve is this so wrong?
I START: many things.
I FINISH: a few of them.

The View from my Office

The View from my Office, originally uploaded by Gophers Ramblings.

This is the tree outside my office, it all it's spelender, just thought I would share it with you, so you know even although I can't actually do very much online at work (due to something called "Websense") I do have something nice to look at, it helps keep me from going to sleep...... Sorry what was I saying oh yeah it helps, well that and large amounts of caffine, technical support can be boring sometimes. I have found something even more boring and that is stocktaking, I do feel sorry for all those people who have to do it, at least you don't have to do a full inventory of what you have with no actual idea of what is being classed as stock and what is this and that, so Im writing it all down the accountant can sort it all out :| oh i Now strongly dislike accountants. As to why Im doing this, well Im the only one who is available to do it as the others are out finishing off some contract work we have.....
*Yawns and stretches* Right Im off to go get some food since I'm not long in from work... Cya.

A Tale of the Unexpected

Well, I got a surprise this morning. I went downstairs there was a letter waiting for me in a nice bright yellow envelope, the handwritting I recognised as being from one of my friends and the post mark told me exactly who it was from. I hope it up and as Im pulling it out, Im confused as it looked like a card of some sort, check pattern on the part I could see, thought, not my birthday, and a bit late for an easter card. I remove the card and see this wonderous cute baby picture and now Im really confused. There was a letter neatly written on the inside, it was from my friends Jenny & Gregor, who I've known since I briefly went to university about 12yrs ago, they met during fresher week and well they've been together even since, we used to call the the "elastic couple" as they were never far apart, they just clicked, it was wonderful. They got married about oh 9 yrs ago now and were happily settle down somewhere near Oxford. Gregor is even more a geek than me, that is when I talk to him ,lets just say we could talk computers all day. Jen is just well Jen, maths is her forte but she helps kids out who are struggling with maths or english as she's part of the "KUMON" program, with helps kids like that, it's not that expensive to put you kid in and well any time I've talked to Jen about it she's been fully enthusiatic about it. Anyway back to the point the little man, I now know as Harry, staring back to me in the photo wasn't exactly planned and as Jen puts it "either the unexpected or the enivitable occured and we made the silly step into parenthood", they did meant to mention it sooner but well the past 9 month for them has been a bit of a tough one, as Jen's mum also wasn't feeling great but thankfully grandma is all better now :) and is Harry's Number one fan. Im sure a lot of you out there know exactly what they are going through and what is to come, I do a little, it's gonna be a fun next few years for them. Only thing is it's yet another birthday in MARCH! ARGH!!! I'll survive, oh and could you please make sure no more births in March Please I have enough cards to write out and remember :P.
Anyways Im off to go and do something else, with a skip in my step, a song in my heart and with a smile, not something that happens often.

Some Photos

Bishop Hill, originally uploaded by Gophers Ramblings.

Well I did say to few people that I was going to one day do some photos from around about me, well here is one, I was driving back from meeting a friend and I had my camera so it got snapped, along with a few more I took later on, this is part of a flikr set so you should be able to see them all (I hope)

Just a quick post

Happy Easter, coming soon more pictures of where I live, well of the hill i can see every day and other stuff, think I'll only link on and then have flikr do the rest (i hope), I'll upload them tomorrow night after I get home from work. That's right someone is working Easter Monday, 12hrs at that, well someone had to do it, shame that someone was me.

I did a quick look around the Park

I took a quick look around my fellow BWTP blogs.
Okay, 1 dead link - I figured that much
I've left comments on some that I read and understood so if you've not got a comment from me recently then I can't figure ya out...
All I have to say is those that I didn't comment on were impossible to decypher (chewy) or not update in a while (Church of Steele) or just erm Im sorry Chief Slacker I just don't get your blog maybe I need to read more.

Strange Stats

Well from time to time I do check my "Site Meter" to see who's been, all i can say is it does through up some interesting results:
Apart from visits from bloggers on my blog list like : Suzanne, DB, Melonie, Wahwer, Heather, sharon, Moogie and Co.
there are a few visit via my blogger profile page and a few page visits directly many of which show a 0 second visit guessing - couldn't wait for load or they were robots.
I see Miss Zooty visited obviously to see what all the "blog tagging" was all about.
Some Searchs the find by Blog:
http://search.blogger.com/?ui=blg&q=tag+board
- from someone in Singapore.
http://uk.search.yahoo.com/search?p=forcastfox&prssweb=Search&ei=UTF-8&fr=fp-tab-web-t-1&x=wrt&meta
=vc%3DcountryUK
- from a Person in the UK, searching for Forcast Fox (i think)
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://gopher-yarrowzoo.dyndns.org/users/blog/wtf_coke_tower.jpg&
imgrefurl=http://gophers-spot.blogspot.com/&h=480&w=640&sz=82&tbnid=5FPva0eI9xu4qM:&tbnh=101
&tbnw=135&hl=en&start=39&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dwtf%26start%3D2
- a google image serach on "WTF" from Mississippi , got a few searches exactly like that.

http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?srch=105&q=gopher&first=11&FORM=PERE hmm MSN search on Gopher's Im guessing.
even got a link from my gretna story
Blog Search for Gretna Serach
But the best one has to be the "random" next blog that sent someone here: I ain't putting the link here... but there is a "lesbian sex now" blog out there, no idea how long it's existed but it was Visit 2,183 it was on Apr 5 2006 at 12:26 am and the person was from eygpt - it's a strange world.
I also got a few technorati search hits from Moggies World and a whole lot more RANDOM stuff, I guess only a few people get my blog as the "random next blog" (ain't they LUCKY...)

Let's all have a big old game of blogger tag.

Okay, I've had a mad idea that will make sure that well other blogs are visited, our own is possibly more visited..
Okay the rules, now there are simple:
You can tag whoever you like as long as
1) They are not the person who tagged you or
2) The person who tagged them (i.e. the person who tagged the person who tagged you)
Example:
I tag - Millie Helen who tags Heather, now Heather can't tag me or Millie Helen but can tag anyone else she likes.
got me now I'll start I've not decided who Im going to tag yet, oh the tag can either be on the Message Board or via blogger comments (i.e. something that the blog writer will pick up on)
Also could you link back to this post and leave a comment on who you've tagged (URL if possible) so that I can see how far this is going, It's kinda like the snowball thing but only funnier (possibly!?)
Okay I've decided by Random Choice that Miss Zooty is the first person to be tagged. Go visit ;)

** Edit 10th April **
Additional Rule: Can the Tagee (the person who's just been tagged) please post I've just been Blog-Tagged By to let the person know you've seen that you've been Tagged - Thanks.

Fairytales do come true...

Totally Random Posting:
Now most people in the UK if you ask them what they know about "Gretna Green" they'll say it's the place couples go to elope, and people still do that and get married properly in "The Old Smithy", the Local Blacksmith shop, as that's what kids used to do was escape to and get married so their parents couldn't do Nothing about it. Im sure there are places like Gretna Green all over the World..
Well now it's gonna be famous for something else. You see it has a football team, which was until a few years ago in the lower division of the english league system. One day this pony-tailed guy with a ciggy in one hand, came round wanting to see the manager, who was cutting the grass, yeah that's how small the club was, that and the local baliff's had been around a few times to check up on the kit locker to see what was there incase they need to sell stuff to help settle debts. The Guy was Brooks Mileson, that day he left a cheque for £ 20,000 to help the youth team as that's what the manager had said really needed to the money not thinking he'd get a bean. A year passes , same dude comes around, managers still cutting the grass, and the guy goes "what to want to be Manager or Groundskeeper?" and the dream started. He put money where is mouth was, not spending huge amounts of cash but giving the club players insentive to play and win. Someone came up with the idea well were close enough to scotland to play in the Scottish League, why not apply and we'll see, they got in to the Scottish 3rd Division. Brooks Mileson has a dream of playing in the Scottish Premier league one day soon, he's building a statium to match the premier league rules on minimum size etc. They won the 3rd Division title last year and were promoted to the 2nd Division this year which they have already won with games to spare they are that many point ahead of 2nd place. Dream come true, I mean what other team boss says you score a hat-trick this week and you get my Austin Martin to drive for a week, he did and his main scorer Kenny Deuchar did it last year and got the car for a week as well as the match ball as that's what happens if ya score 3, you get to keep one of the match balls as a souviner. Now your saying what's so special well they are in the Scottish Cup final against Hearts who are in the Scottish Premier League the top division, they have had to put out opponents for the divisions above them to reach the final. Well the semi final that put the there was last Saturday and what did the boss man do, he go celebrate, no he went to the animal santuary he has to help out as well it's lambing season and well one lamb was born that night, and it may just become the most famous lamb since "Larry" as he said he might get it to lead the team out at the Hampden Park - the scottish national statium. This is the first time anyone from the "lower division" has made it to a cup final in many years. They got a slim chance of winning but even if they lose, they could end up playing again the Elite of Europe in the UEFA cup, total fairytale. The guy behind it all is even gonna let the guys go away for a few weeks after end of the league proper to recharge for the final on him, he even paid for a load of tickets and transport to make sure the supporters could go see the team in the semi. I mean you all know what it's like you support your local team be it football, baseball, basketball, american football, ice hockey. You should at the ref, the players, the TV when they do something STUPID. It's all in the passion, that man is going places. If someone had said to me to put a bet on "Gretna FC" in the Scottish Cup Final back in August when the leagues kicked off the season I'd have laughed, now I'd be crying because I'd have made a MINT.
Good Luck Gretna FC and Good Luck Brooks Mileson don't worry you'll be able to smoke all the way back home.. (Since there is a smoking ban in place now all over Scotland)
From another Black n White Fan - That will be "The Pars" like but come on Kenny put one in the net.

A Film Review: Duma

What can I say be well directed and brilliant film. It's about a boy and his best friend a cheeta who he raised from a cub after his dad almost running over it one night after it's mother had been killed by lions.
They live out in the african wilderness, farming the land. Many names for the "pet" are tried but only Duma seem to fit, we see duma grow up learning to run like a cheeta should, reaching the speed of 80-90 kph in seconds it's breathtaking. It reaches the point where Duma must return to the wild. The boy's dad however takes ill and they plan to take Duma back to where he came from and released. However like many thing in life his dad doesn't see his plan to the end and dies, his mother realising they can't run the farm so they have to move to the city to stay with his aunt and Duma is supposed to go somewhere to be looked after. When the get to his aunts the man who's picking Duma up isn't going to be there for a few days, so duma stays too, but escapes when he gets frighten after chewing on a TV remote, only due to the fact he scares the aunt who runs out the door, this is of course seconds after his mother has left to pick him up. Duma follows the truck and well causes chaos at school when he turns up naturally the boy is not bothered, just scared for Duma safety.
The boy then decides to forfil his fathers wish and return Duma to the wild, on the way running into a drifter who's out to make a fast buck maybe but then realises that it's not the way once he gets to know the strange pair and decides to help but not before being stuck in an old diamond mine when the pair realise he's trying to make that fast buck. After getting himself out the mine, he catchs back up to the pair after duma gets cuaght in a trap and agrees to take them to the mountains, however drifter gets sick as he's bitten by something nasty, the boy saves him by running to a nearby village in the dark and with lions about, tying duma up to protect the stranger but duma escapes and finds a mate but comes back to say goodbye one last time. I highly recommend you rent / buy this movie.

Okay Call me Stupid But......

How the HELL is one after i've uploaded my pics to flikr meant to get them so i can view them in blog without having to do 1 post per freaking PIC aka i wanna update my snow post so my poor webserver can have a rest.

Happy Birthday to My Mum

It's my mum's birthday today, I won't reveal her age even although she doesn't know how to work a pc (dispite years of my attempts to teach her).
Unfortunatly the weather isn't the nicest, it's raining has been most of the day but then again it's March in Scotland and thus I can't expect anything less.
One wonderful thing is that this Sunday is Mothering Sunday here in the UK, hmm nice double presents...

Why......do........I..........even...........bother!

Now dear reader a semiantly-reoccuring theme of my "life" (ha now that is a joke - I don't have one or rather very much of one!) I do sometimes just think "Why do I freaking bother!" Example tonight "dearest" mother said she's seen the griter lorry out gritting the road and said so, you might get have a bit of trouble getting out in the morning - to which I go "I don't think I will, it's going to be ok" now was it something I remotely said - Do I need to go see a "shrink" now I know I'll be fine due to wonderous tool called "ForcastFox" the accuweather.com extension for Firefox, okay so -3C (27F) overnight isn't exactly tropical but expected for time of year. I hear mutterings from mother! I think i should just maybe not say a fucking WORD, so I go to try and smooth things over by saying that I've checked the weather on the computer (that and I do listen to the radio on the way home and catch the local weather forcast). Now my mum isn't into computers and never will I've tried for past 15+ yrs to get her to try and use 'em but to no avail - it takes her to work the freeview box & the Video/DVD combo player that is downstairs, so PC's are beyond. I was told "in future I'll not say a word even if there are 10 gritter lorries...."
Hmm oh that and a good friend seems to be ignoring me in a game Im back to playing even although I said "I was giving it up" I can't I've tried - they coding hurt my head too much, still is because Im determine to finish the id3v1/(v2)/ mpeg frame find and read php class (ID3v2 spec is erm well ya interesting!)
Now Im away to watch "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" on DVD which I got today.

Happy Birthday to Sharon

Yes well it's that time, time to wish fellow blogger and all round wonderful lady Sharon a Happy Birthday. So head on over and give her your kindest regards :D

What's in a Name Eh?

Well what is in a Name?

G	Glamorous
O	Outrageous
P	Patriotic
H	Handsome
E	Entertaining
R	Realistic

Name / Username:

Name Acronym Generator

From Go-Quiz.com
Oh how true this is, Head over to Moogie the "Old" 's and say hi or you could just hop to Lesley The Omnibus Driver and say hi:)

A Review..

How special would you feel if the entire school had made an effort to welcome you on your 1st day, even if it was in the middle of the school year. Oh yeah one thing your profoundly deaf. Hmm you got this one yet.
Here is a story about 1 4yr old girl called Olivia, her local school of 48 pupils (it's only a little village school) and staff made the effort to learn sign language after finding out from Olivia's big sister that she wanted to come. All I can say is If this was me I'd be very proud of my big sister. Hey siblings may fight but love overcomes that instantly.
Full Story: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/devon/4769456.stm

Another story I read of recently (Full Story):
If you read the front page story of the SF Chronicle Thursday,
Dec 15, 2005, you would have read about a female humpback whale who had become entangled in a spider web of crab traps and lines. She was weighted down by hundreds of pounds of traps that caused her to struggle to stay afloat. She also had hundreds of yards of line (rope) wrapped around her body, her tail, her torso, a line tugging in her mouth.

A fisherman spotted her just east of the Farralone Islands (outside the Golden Gate) and radioed an environmental group for help. Within a few hours, the rescue team arrived and determined that she was so badly off, the only way to save her was to dive in and untangle her -a very dangerous proposition. One slap of the tail could kill a rescuer.

They worked for hours with curved knives and eventually freed her. When she was free, the divers say she swam in what seemed like joyous circles. She then came back to each and every diver, one at a time, and nudged them, pushed them gently around. SHE THANKED THEM! Some said it was the most incredibly beautiful experience of their lives.

The guy who cut the rope out of her mouth says her eye was following him the whole time, and he will never be the same...
----
Now tell me your've not got a least a tear in your eye. Two Stories that show where kindness is shown it's repaid. Remember that.

What I decided and other stuff.

I decided to stop my subscription to World of Warcraft for a while, it was doing my head in and well tonight I think I totally screwed up on my old Guilds Team Speak just hope someone can forgive me, darn my mouth can get me in so much trouble sometimes!!!!
Also since I have the time I thought I'd write my own ID3 Tag read class - you know those nice MP3 type files, it will read the file and tell me what the artist, album, song, year, track, comment as well as information such as the mpeg version / layer / file bitrate / sample frequency but it's glitching - i won't go into it too much just going to say the what Im looking for isn't easy to find I'll just say this
"AAAAAAAA AAABBCCD" < the 1st 2 bytes header data I need to read
where it says "A" it means that has to be a 1, the rest can be mixed so you can see not easy as 11111111 => FF => 255 is a common occurance in the file, most of the time the code I have works, working on fixing the code to deal with the rest (that don't)
Oh yeah and dispite the snow I was able to get to work :(

This is what I woke up to this morning

Well I woke up to snow, it had apparently been falling since 2am, i was still up at that point but never thought to look out window, well why would I.
So thanks to Sharon for the nice e-mail I picked up when I woke up and checked my mail I decided it was high time I went and played a little with my digital camera I mean 3 months and not much to show for it eh well I'll just dive right in and begin with the shots then shall I.
This is the view that met me when I open my bedroom curtains, nice ain't it.
Well this is a set of chinese chestnut trees that are well about 150m from my house, riot of green in the summer but right now all snow covered they look wonderous. Okay Im just gonna stop talking and let the pictures do the talking I hope as they help show of my new camera finally :D. I do hope Rick or someone who has a professional Camera stops by and tells me what they think.







Well That's them all, I only took a few and these link to 1024x768 images, I have the originals too and those are twice that size direct from the camera, best to publish just the thumbnails, Enjoy your morning / afternoon :)
** EDIT **
Ophs my bad I erm did some of the editing not using the bloggers "Add Image" tool and thus mistyped the path to the full sized image, should all be fixed now.

Well That's gone and torn it!

Well it has well and truely gone and TORN IT!
Okay, I've no idea what happend exactly, but I did post to BWTP and the entry did post I saw the post, now I've just checked and the post is no longer there, no even listed as editable. Now all I wanna know is was it deleted by someone if so why and if so then that person can take their blog and stick it where the sun don't freaking SHINE! Ya got me, We CLEAR on this!!!

** Update **
Okay it appears blogger thinks I want it as a draft, I did make one minor change to it but hmm it reposted fine *swear* if SOMEONE could fix this for me as I can't see it

Monday Blues..

It's been one of those days at work.
I came in to 1 more dead camera, thankfully that was an easy fix, phone the site have them reset the trip switch, after that it starts to go wrong but thankfully not just for me.
Colleague gets stuck in traffic on the way to fix / investigate faults with a few of the cameras we have. IT Manager wonders why noone phoned him to say oh btw the tempreture in the server room is a bit warm (a bit warm being 25C), well someone didn't bother telling me Formally that we'd to start to monitor it, it was kinda oh were testing it (nothing more was said after that). Speaking of Camera a site manager wondered why no-one at the company had replied to his e-mail about something that had happened, I did by phone and I said so in the reply e-mail which I made sure was CC'd to one of the Company Directors (and BCC'd to the Boss ;) ) He phoned me up and told me that well basically I was talking CRAP and really shouldn't be doing that especially if I was CC'ing it to a director who was also looking into it. Well to the Best of My Knowledge I did phone him on that day after checking the digital recording and saw nothing. well its not so bad, before I left work 2 more Pan / Tilt units were required along with a telemetry drive board for one site, nice length of new coax for another site (since erm they'd joined it adhoc stylee) and my colleague was at a 3rd site investigating / fixing, unfortunatly he's got the bosses Jag Keys in his pocket, well he is the bosses son so it's allowed ;)
The poor accounts manager tried to kill me as well, her laptop spat the dummy today while she was in mid check of something, machine ended up getting rebooted and well no back up had been made today and well thank god Sage is good software and has recovery tools built in, 6hrs work could have been lost, not a lot you think but hmm enough. I left the boss and the accounts manager to fix it once I seen that well it was okay since nothing I could do would help. She came through and said it was all gone all the data for today.. Then smirked as I went into panic mode! (not funny at all).
Oh and Dear BWTP people Im considering leaving since well I've nothing to post there that would interest and well very few of you come here and leave a comment, also I don't always read everyone's blogs I sometimes only read a few daily, some weekly, some less so and chewy's well erm blue moon time..
Sigh, roll on tuesday.

Nephew's Birthday

Well Happy Birthday to my Dearest Nephew Connor who is 8 today, that's right 8 somehow he has survived this long..
I've no photos as yet but I may post 1 at a later date.
Well let's see Im his favourite Uncle again, after giving him £20 in his card and setting up his steering wheel & pedals for his Playstation 2 - it's a "racing pack" so it's got a seat that's attached as well so it all clips together and I just HAD to set it up (I got no option in this FYI) he's doing not bad, when I'd left he had only done like 3-4 shortish races with it and he was gaining places..
20,9,8,2 - I'd say he was getting the hang of it no bother, he just needs to remember that it's a steering wheel if he ever needs to set it up again for that game (which I don't think he does ;)). Oh and because he's Connor he didn't just have 1 cake he had 2 - a chocolate cake with loads of chocolate icing on it which is very tasty and a "football" cake a nice light sponge with a icing like the outside of a football on it.
I don't know what our other sister is up to, she dropped the card off this morning at like 7am (must have been before her work) and well not been seen since :( - done this before, but hey he's cool with that he just got an extra hug or 2 because I know a few of you out there would want me giving him a hug from them so to speak ;) so it done :)..
Oh it's my dear old dad's birthday tomorrow - I won't post about it, as well it's just dear old dad and not really that exciting ;) - I know Im cruel and harsh but that's life sometimes..

The Weekend...

Well I've just about got over a superb weekend I had.
Got home friday night for work, on automatic so to speak and really didn't do much, didn't stay up late as well erm it's a bit cold over here right now and my computer being in the attic not that far removed from the outside world with minimal heating and stuff well you can imagine.
Got up saturday with a plan to go do some birthday card shopping as well it's nephews b/day soon and my dads and a friends soon after so though do that, go have a look see what dvd's / music cd's I can get.. got myself "Wallace & Gromit : Curse of the warerabbit" just cos well it's a british film and it's good. I also got "The Pacifier" which Im currently watching and laughing sometimes at the antics of Uber Hardman Vin Desiel Trying to act like a mom after being a SEAL it's not easy but someone's gotta do it, got a few other films as well, got a few computer games for my PC well they were on offer so I got 'em. I then go for a Big Mac as well I was hungry and it was on the way home, just finish that, driving up a set of lights out the local retail park, phone goes could I pop along, I go sure. Now the journey from where Im at to my sisters should take like 5-10 minutes, I of course take longer as I've still a few things to get and some flowers for mom just cos Im like that. So I get to my sisters and she goes "Could you take Connor" to the game. I go "sure I'll take him" now this is like 2:20 the game starts at 3 and well we still gotta get there and into the ground. We make it on time :D, my nephew amazed me and my sister by staying the full 90 minutes of the game, which ended in a 1-1 draw (worked out about 1h50 as 20 minute break in middle or so) and then he gets bored waiting to get out the carpark lol, well he is only 7 and it was his and my first time at a football match.
We go back and we play "Fifa 2006" and replay the game so to speak except this time "our" team wins 2-0 ;) each time we played it :D - so you could say I've got him support the local team for those who wanna know is "Dunfermline Athletic FC" aka "The Pars" :D. Well by the time i get some food and was able to leave ;) he's a sweetheart and don't let me hear anyone say diffrant, I got home like 9pm, I left at like 11:30am - get me.
I jump online to check mail, play Some WoW and like catch up on what's been happening and I hear on my Guild's TeamSpeak a very drunken member of the Guild who I know is visiting her sister who's going out with a good mate of mine was funny.
Sunday I get up late as well I some how ended up staying online till like 2:30am. I jump straight back into WoW once I had woken up etc. and i get invited out for dinner with mate, his g/f and her sister so I get directions and well erm get to "dundee" no problem but erm after that well it's a little tricky trying to figure out what direction the map means and driving and well they it's a little crazy. I managed to navigate my way to meet up with my friend and take him to do a little food shopping to let the girls get "ready!" now all I will say on this is "7pm came and went". We got the place we were eating at at like 8:40 well almost lol.. I got to meet clare and well it's fun, exactly like i thought of her, she says she shy, lol well if she is she could have fooled me. I'd have posted this yesterday but well work was interesting yesterday lol. Im gonna sign off now and warm up as erm I need to warm my feet up now..
Toodles

The Template and the Stylesheet.....

Hmm well this is an interesting one, ever since the conception of the Web browser way back in the early 90's with the Mosaic browser (think before pre-Netscape) then came Internet Explorer and the more popular (at the time) Netscape which is based on the Mozilla engine which it still uses today, now these browser "fought" for people, MS bundled IE with Windows so you didn't need to go and find one, then you have Opera a great browser that if you were to look hard enough into IE you'd see operaesque behaviour. We should also mention Firefox the new kid on the block, Safari and Omni for the Mac and Knoqueror for those nice people who like linix. The only thing is well we have a set of rules that state that if you use tag A it will has to do this type of behaviour and for Tag B that behaviour. That isn't the case just like with Stylesheets certain browsers Interprut your wonderously created Style list slightly wrong.
Known bugs are the "padding and border" bug in IE 5.x (know as the Box Model Bug) and there are many more, I hunted around and found a very comprehensive list of them at Centricle: css filters (css hacks) this lists all the know "bugs" with all the browsers listed and well how to get your lovely page to display exactly the same in IE, Firefox, Opera, Netscape, Safari and Knoqueror. After all IE5 has that bug i listed so you look up how to do it and well there are actually several ways to do it ;) Heather,Moogie & Sharon you may wanna have a look and point this out to others ;) hey it's a good resource point if you want to "fix" a few glitches in your template with a specific browser ;) and score brownie point for getting it looks the same all over - no doubt my page breaks in IE5.
Enjoy right I'm off to do something interesting, what I don't know..

The Weekend

Well lets see what I've done this weekend.....
Not a lot :D
Well that's a lie, i posted a letter yesterday before spending the most of the rest of the day watching my nephew play football, or playing Fifa '06 on the PS2 with nephew (he won all the time). Finally got a break when I help him get a bit further on in one his Harry Potter Games on his Gameboy Advance. I managed to eventually "escape" at around 6 for some food and then chilled out watching the magic roundabout and eating pizza before playing some World of Warcraft
Today so far I've spent an hour freezing trying to get a 2nd hand part out of a old car to put in my oldest sisters car to no avail it's the alternator and it's hard to get out as no tyres on the thing so no way to get a lift on it.

Template Changes are now complete

Well that's the template changes done for now. :) Tagboard added as you may have noticed, clock backgrounds done and clocks moved around :). 5 Color schemes to choose from (ATM the font changes are disabled in Firefox due to some weird non-replicatable bug with blogger). If your using some other browser and notice something weird let me know it's probably something I can write a quick fix for ;) Like there should be a space where the blog title is (no idea why it does this in Firefox but the "bug" is ok with me ;) )
Opera users let me know - totally untested as erm I my copy appears to be screwed up and I've not re-downloaded it yet. IE users let me know also if anything wierd is happening I'll post a "what it looks like picture" at some point soon.
Oh yeah Have a goood weekend. Im gonna try and have one :P

New Template

Well I've switched the template to this blog so all can see it. I still have 1 or 2 minor adjustments to make but they are small, it's just a surround for the clocks to be done.

Blogger: The next Step... (pt 2)

Okay I have a small problem with the new template I can get the background colors to change but when I try to get the text to change color which I'd want as well green on green don't. I have a working piece of code it works fine from the code I have updated online but it stops working when I place it in the template - works fine on here from local copy of code and from online version - freaking Annoying spits out a vicious error that it can't get to what I need to get to or that what Im looking at has no data :| Anyone got any ideas...
I know I need to get away from blogger get a domain and be done.. but hmm it's the hassle.

Blogger: The next Step...

I've been playing and well instead of just changing it I thought I'd let people preview it so you can see how it will look.
New Template Test
leave a comment on here as I won't actually look at the comments on there as well it's a test blog.
**** Update ****
Well I've been playing some more and well go see what I've done - i just now need additional color sets :P

Ack I feel crap!

Hmm darn it woke up yesterday with a little bit of a sore throat nursed it with strepsils all day, same today, feels like Im swallowing something sharp, back of throat feels rough and is probably glowing red so to speak, sipping liquid to keep it lubricated to try and salve the rawness :( I'll get over it just - means silence in the office as I don't speak as often.

Melonie Made Me Do It

4 jobs I've had in my life:
Technical Support / Call Centre / ARC Staff
not had any other jobs - that's my 1st and only

4 movies I could watch over and over:
Lord of The Rings : all of them
The Last Samuri
51st State
Bulletproof Monk - very hard to choose I have a very large DVD selection

TV shows I love(d) to watch:
Startrek : Any of them
Stargate
Doctor Who
Hmm anything that isn't "Reality" TV that I find SO SO SO Boring

4 places where I have lived:
Not Lived anywhere but where I live just now sorry to disapoint,
See I am boring.

4 places I've been to on vacation:
London (a few times)
Relatives for summers many years ago.

4 places I would rather be:
West Virginia,
Indiana,
Hawaii,
Somewhere I could relax, actually relax and feel like doing something rather than just sitting staring at a pc screen.

4 of my favourite foods:
Hmm tricky but it would have to be something like:
a nice fillet of fresh trout,
brocolli,
roast potatoes,
melon (or somthing like that)

4 websites I visit daily:
Melonie
Sharon
Moogie
Laura

4 people worth tagging:
I can't think of anyone who's not already been tagged, Im like that person you send those e-mails that say I must get this back and you never get them back from me. I'm a safe bet never to pass on anything I don't is worthy of passing on.

Virus Alert!

Okay this one has been around for a while but the latest current varient is a bit of biatch, it deletes / overwrites 11 types of files, for more info read here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4661582.stm
No need to panic - all you need to do is make sure your Anti-virus software is up-to-date and has been ran recently (you do have anti-virus software don't you I do believe I recommend it a while back - don't say you wasn't warned!) and keep an eye out for "dobious" e-mails, get mailwasher / mailwasher pro (the pro is worth the cash as you can report it to spam cop :D and speaking of which I got my 1st reply back from a ISP about an IP / site - shut down in 24hrs or less :D Party On.
Oh I don't get to relax this week either - oh well.

What a week

Where do I begin!
I'll begin with last friday, no not 2 days ago, 9 days ago.
I was busy most of the day finishing off testing and packing camera equipment and other pieces of equipment that was going to installed on the monday / tuesday / wednesday.
All packed up and tested by 4pm :) ready to be packed.
Early starts all week which helped (kinda!)

Monday - customer #1 - 2 fixed dome style camera to look after the way in and out of the site, customer changed the spec on us, we can't see the barrier they've since installed as where we were putting the camera can't see it if a truck is being weighed on the weighbridge.
Loaded up the 4 cameras, digital video recorder (DVR), keypad, cat5e cable, power cable, co-ax cable, connectors for the cat5 & co-ax, tools, etc into the hire car so my boss and his son & camera tech, could drive 450 miles to customer #2 to do all the work needed.

Tuesday - they arrive at customer #2, meanwhile I'm let out the office (they do this now and then) to go to help my colleague finish most if not all the wiring to an alarm system that I'll need to help program at a later date for customer #3, as I was seriously the only one small enough to get into the attic spaces as well hmm the hatches to get to them are shall we say "small" I could just get in them.
I hear you asking why, 2 cables needed run from sensors back to the main panel as it would be easier to do that than run them to where we were running the other cables for that section of the building. It's a garden centre with a restruant attached and all the walls are erm 18" thick. We got there about 10:30am , we didn't leave until 6:20pm, the place closes at 6pm. Got back home late. During the day I was getting phone calls on this and that from the boss, like why no video here I said to check the cabling and then this or that.

Wednesday - Im back in the office, discovered after I had asked the question yesterday to my boss - are all the cameras and the cat5e to co-ax convertor hub (which needs power!) on the same phase, reassured by 1 guy onsite yes but we are on the limits for our supply! then discover they aren't, Great!
We had them re-wire them all to same phase of the supply, now I don't know if you've ever had to work with cat-5e and tried to put connectors on the end but it's not the easiest (cat-5e is that cable that has what looks like a big phone connector on it 8pins, sometimes called an RJ-45 connector on the end and is used to connected pc's to other pc's and switches, routers, cable modems etc) Those are Fiddly to up on if you don't have small fingers / cable fanned out in the right order and cut square as well cables don't always connect! We got it all resolved by 5pm (i finish at 4).

Thursday - Return to normallity, everyone is back in HQ, now all we need to do is get pictures back from customer #2 to base.. Easy - NO!!! Need to get into router to configure it so that it points at the dvr so our software can connect to it, Simple, you've guessed it dear reader - NO it wasn't!
Called the ISP who provides the adsl line to customer #2, 1st call was very helpful that let us get into the router with the username and password they provided us with - yeah they password protected the router (stops people changing stuff on it) now the thing is what do you when it says "Speedtouch 510" on the outside but when you get the page up for it, it says "Speedtouch Alactel" (didn't get around to till late on thursday as it was catch up day). We weren't (I wasn't!) getting anywhere and it was like 4pm so I went home and we stopped for day)
Friday - 3 calls to ISP (Demon Internet - named and shamed - 1 from the guy down there like we were told to do) couldn't resolve what we wanted to do which was where do we go to get to "Port Forwarding / NAT / Port Mapping" as said yesterday it was a Alactel (looking at isp's webpage says the supply a speedtouch 510 nothing about speedtouch alcatel!) - they all said can you call us back when your in front of a pc by the router which we had the guy down there do with us listening in via the guys mobile - I said I was offsite and it was a distance away - I gave up, called the maker of the router and in 2 minutes resolved the problem what it had taken 3 calls and 30 minutes of wasted time by all to get the ISP tech support to tell us. Got into the router got the guy to set up what we needed for each of the "ports" there were 3 needed to be done, set the ip address of the router to somewhere that wouldn't be used as well needed to fix that as well if the power went out and there was no pc attached it would get a different IP (possibly - didn't want that) so we were done with the router had the guy go the DVR and set that up to the ip address we'd given it, had him save the all the changes and exit, and then tried to connect. Success 1st time connect :) Thank ****ing god! this was done at 3:30pm Friday only taken 2 days - I'd have been down or the boss would have done it if he had, had time wednesday but took so long on simple things like connections, power etc not his fault..
Saturday - Installed broadband for my dear sister :D - now Aol broadband says it needs 98se and won't work below that my 98se cd wouldn't play ball with the cd-rom in her machine so when I ran the CD it went and told me it couldn't find bits to finish the install, had to re-do the install of 98. Once I got back into windows I then just had to install broadband usb drivers - AoL CD said it couldn't do that, I knew otherwise :D - i ran the driver installer manually and it worked sister has broadband and she happy with it..

MY Router - Continued!

Sorry If I made some people go eh!? or make their brain hurt a little trying to understand it, sorry it's my technogeekie side showing.
The basics of it are it a bit of kit I plug my adsl line into, plug my computers into , power up and it connects them all to the net flawlessly. I have something similar set up on one machine it uses software to do the same thing using a seperate modem instead of having one built in. That explain it better, well I got a e-mail reply today from the makers of it - I put in a support request on it and got the reply back today, I've to check / Change something (I won't go techie on ya) and double check my e-mail server settings with my ISP and hopefully all will be well. Im gonna do that at the weekend. I've had a fun few days and I will post about them soon, when I can find energy to do another post..

My Router - The Final Chapter....?

Okay well I got another router a really nice D-Link 504T which does all that i want it to do finally got it hooked up, and it all looked like it was working swimmingly until I noticed I wasn't getting any replies back from spamcop for all the spam I report and Mailwasher had been hanging kinda and i had to force it close.. I then let it finish 2 related errors it couldn't connect to my isp smtp service to send mail out..
Theory checked with a quick test mail which FAILED..
So as of now I'm back on the old system that has worked so faithfully
ADSL Modem Uptime 8hrs..

No I've not died

I am still alive, I have been leaving descreet notes of this around the blogsphere, a comment here and there to let some pople know Im still here.
What a week or so it's been at work. We've got a few contracts that are just now starting to kick off in a big way, need the equipment all checked and working so that's what I've been doing, that and talking nicely to our dome camera suppliers about the next fault I've found with one of their cameras - not been many just the order I think was a little rushed as well our customer was going hmmmmmmmm a lot on deciding what to go for etc.. Built the 1st lot up to discover hmm dodgy on/off switch in that it wouldn't switch at all, unfinished welding on a dome didn't look good and could have leaked and a camera failure which of course meant I was delayed in getting the 2nd customers cameras checked over which I've just done or at least enough to be going on with, as well what I've checked goes live as of monday, customer #1 is getting it all done over the tuesday / wednesday and on one of those days I will be out the office at an other customers helping my colleague finish off the cabling of their new alarm system which i've then gotta adjust the programming on, name the zones, types of zones, users and user codes, redo the engineer code.
So what time I've had has been taken up either sleeping or chilling out I've not forgotten any of you guys out there honest.
I will try and get out this weekend and takes some pictures I need the exercise I think..

Hugs to all

Blogger World Trailer Park - Buttons

Okay folks post yer ideas, comments, comments to the ideas, comments to the comments and replies to the above below...
Constructive Ideas about overall size, shape, possible colors and wording that will be in all the buttons (or color sets so say BWTP - in 16 different colors with different background colors etc) allowing space for Individualisation of the button - Might be able to even do 2 seperate buttons and combine them with a bit of code I could probably make up.

Gopher's Random
Blog World
Trailer Park
Ramblings

Like That but the background image and the BWTP text would be as one, then all you need to do is a create the overlay - don't worry about getting it to work - that's what others are here for ;) and management :D

m***********g bl***y routers!

In case dear reader you hadn't guess I'm well to put it mildly ROYALLY PISSED OFF!!!!!!!!! Now I got a router on saturday, lets just say it wasn't upto the spec I wanted returned it and got it changed for one that claimed it would do the job with Port Forwarding and the like, look at manual - impressive should do the job. Did it, did it HELL as like. I set it up and after logging in with the default admin & password supplied guess what I got..... A Page very, very similar but with fancy graphics to the 1st router i.e all I could do was set up my username and password to connect to my ISP, no menu system, no **** all.. Me ROYALLY PEEVED! only set it up today as well was busy yesterday, so tomorrow is gonna be a very good day, unless your anywhere near the either end of the phone when I call the shop...........
Do Not By Origo ADSL Routers - what they say on the box isn't what ya get inside!!
Yours

ROYALLY PEEVED & PISSED OFF!

In Reply to "A Quiz of Questions"

Okay thank you for the response I'll try and be as open and honest as I can and if I can't I'll say I can't.
What a varied and mixed bag of questions well I did ask for that.
Here goes.

DB - Hmm here are yours.

1. Where's the nearest Pub... and why aren't you there partyin more often?
   
   Hmm nearest Public House (if you can even call it that more of a Dive) is called the Cleickim Inn simply because one of the roads near it is called Cleickimin Cresent, it's well lets see down the bottom of my street, near my Favourite Pizza place, about 25 yrds away. Why aren't I partying there more often it's not the place to party, got a few places to party but hmm they are far enough away to be good places to go but full of people, Im not really a party person, Im the quiet type didn't ya know.



2. When are you planning to visit Hawai`i?
   
   Hmm tricky one as well I don't actually own a passport, only once been outside mainland UK, well not really now as there is a road joining the Isle of Skye to the mainland but been to the Isle of Skye & Thruso to the North of Me and London for my friends wedding and a few other times - furthest south I've been. So erm not for a while.



3. How long have you been in IT?
   
   Strictly speaking Im not in IT, although my job does entail the use of computers and doing technical support for the companies 2 engineers + all our customers who have problems with their alarm systems. I'm also the guy that gets the new kit to figure out how it all goes together. If your taking involvement with PC's / computers then since i was about 10, on ye olde BBC B Microcomputer at school, typing in programs to see what they did. Got my first computer (so to speak) when i was 12, ZX Spectrum 48K elite computer, I've just picked up stuff from there like how to build, install new parts and resolve hardware / software conflicts - although somethings still puzzle me. Hope that answers your questions.


Junebugg

4. How the hell did you get the name Gopher?
   
   Hmm well that's an interesting story actually. I did go to university right after I finished school (bad idea probably!). I did get to meet a lot of people, I made some good friends most of which I keep in touch with today. Univeristy was a high point and a very low point as well, all i can say is I've stared into the Abyss but didn't leap (Don't ask for any more info!). I have a love of computers and well I was good at finding things plus there was around that time a puppet on kids TV over here called "Gordon The Gopher" now my first name is Gordon so you can see how it came about, don't know who started it, it just happened and I didn't get mad at them. It would be Gordon go find this on the net, evetually it became Gopher Go find this as well I was good at it, Still am at ferreting out Information, glitches in blog templates etc. Yup Answered that :D


Jackie

5. Can you describe your best childhood memory?
   
   Hmm this is a tricky one Jackie, I have a few. The one I gonna go is a christmas one, I was 12, mother had put ribbon all over the living room for me to follow, I found bits and pieces, a TV, my computer and such it was fun, set it up and well played it till it died (which was quick - it had to a fault :( ) never mind got fixed.
   Another is summer time I'd always be out till like 9pm at a local Country Park, I knew most of the staff by name, I have this infectious humour and ability to make friends temporarly so was never bored. Reminds me need to go find a few of the people I know from back then.
6. 
   
   Moogie
   
7. If you could pick one thing in your life to do over or change, what would it be?
   
   Hmm I honestly can't think of anything I'd chance as well if I change something in they myriad of possiblities I may not have gotten to know you all if my choices had been different. It's actually a miricle Im here at all, let's just say there is a the gap between my age and my parents is greater than my age. Maybe the one thing I'd have changed is getting my spine fixed when I could have gotten it fixed easier or rather trying not to have it needing to be done in first place.


Wahwer

8. Seaside vacation or mountain getaway?
   
   Hmm now that depends on who's going with me. I don't dislike large crowds but sorry I can't take the heat so it would have to be some where cool, somewhere I could actually relax, if i can even remember what that is. Most likely it would be mountain getaway as the Seaside places tend to be crowded with idiots thinking they are cool..
   


Roxi

9. Who are you?
   
   Tricky, and yet not tricky. Many meanings to this question. Who am I..
   Well my name is Gordon, I'm 31, from a village in Western part of the Kingdom of Fife in Scotland. I don't have a girlfriend at the momement, my previous girlfriend was my 1st girlfriend, lets just being dump hurt. Im F.I.N.E (go watch the Italian Job - the remake for what that means or google it). I'd say FINE sums me up actually quiet well. I like a multitude of musical styles and stuff from Queen to Athlete, Ash to The Chemical Brothers and many more I can say I listen to. Im the youngest of 4 children (although I will only acknowledge having 2 sisters - I've hinted why in previous posts) I read many books from Harry Potter to the Kinsey Milhone series so I have wide musical and reading tastes. I can cook, have written poetry - see my website for that - link on sidebar. Think that does that.


Vicky Waters

10. I've never been to Scotland, so if I go what food unique to Scotland should I try?
    
    Hmm well there is the thing Scotland is famous for Haggis, my some fresh caught local brown or rainbow trout is nice if you like fish. We are the crossroads for such a diverse range of people that you can get any style of food depending on where you are. I'd say Haggis or maybe black pudding (bit dry for my liking), or find a fish and chip shop and have fish n chips - we do it real nice up here :) - Hope that helps

Wow long post took me a while to write hope that answers all your question.
Addition:

Melonie:

11. What is your favorite "guilty pleasure" on television? Is it some reality show? A soap opera? A sitcom?
    
    Hmm i don't really have 1 as such, it's certainly not "reality" TV sorry I hate that whole senario. Probably be something like Dr. Who or something like that..



12. What is your favorite literature (I use this term loosely) genre? Mystery? Sci Fi? Fiction?
    
    Hmm Well I like a bit of Sci-Fi, I've read all of Douglas Adams books, Some of the Discworld Series by Terry Pratchet. I also Read Sue Grafton's Kinsey Milhone series so mystery, crime, sci-fi oh and I've been known to pick up the occational book by Jill Mansell



13. Do you fish?
    
    In a word, NO i like fresh caught fish but I don't have the patience to sit and wait for a bite, the few times I've tried I've gotten nothing.



14. What was your favorite cartoon as a child?
    
    I had several like Hong Kong Fooey, Captain Caveman and the like well early 80's toons, ya dig

Come On, Come On

Hmm 5 Questions posted so far.. Come on people I know there are few of you out there that haven't commented but well I know want to ask me something.. I will think on those 5 that have all ready been posted, after all what's the point of doing this if you I don't answer them correctly or do a polotian on ya and give half an answer. Post more Questions in Post Below. Thank you.

A Quiz of Questions

Okay I know I may regret saying this but well I think Moogie has done this kinda thing and I think a few others too, so here goes. Pose me a question, I'll answer anything within reason. Junebugg the question that you asked my in my last post will be answered. Now Post your Questions in Comments Thank You.
Sanity Restored (Well Maybe - We're debating it right now all of us.)

Why do I even bother?

I sometimes wonder why I even bother to have a blog you know. Why I bother to leave comments on other peoples blog, that I read on a semiently daily / weekly / biweekly basis at random points. I often even wonder why I get up at all sometimes, why I put up with all the shit I put up with, taking flak from all around and stuff. I often can't be bother posting even I have something to say, often can't be bother posting comments on other blogs. I even think of deleting the whole thing and disappering offline forever sometimes. Unstable is how best to describe me right now, can be happy doing something completly boring or really intrigacate and be bored with it the next sec or if it's World of Warcraft get pissed off when Im clearly doing something and the enemy comes along (1,2,3 or more) and kills me when Im busy doing something then laugh like it some motherfucking joke to them.. Times like that I just think why do I even bother.
Post could go on and on but you get the point.. Comments are On (For now!)

I've survived christmas

Well I can say this I survived Christmas here at the ranch although it was a close run thing let me tell ya. Well I had 5 glorious days off work. Had Friday off, the weekend I don't work weekends :D, and Monday Tuesday off as well. So All in all not bad, sat back, chilled out to my vast music collection, played World of Warcraft but in a totally chilled out way, decided my 2nd Skills such as First Aid, Fishing and Cooking needed to be upgraded as well as my main Professions of Mining and Blacksmithing so with this in mind I set about fishing for some of the strange and wonderful things you can fish for in the various parts like Mithrel Headed Trout and Deviate Fish - hmm Cooked Deviate fish has a party trick up it's sleeve so to speak it turns ya in to a pirate for 30 minutes and your pretty immune to certain spells and the like. Christmas day was fun got up late well 11:00, had a shower. My older sister and BIL arrived so I got them their presents while waited on mother coming back from church so presents could be opened kinda thing. Although parents had already opened the ones they had gotten from me and other people. Mum did like her Phantom of the Opera DVD box set :D, the stuff I ordered from www.lush.co.uk and the Jim Reeves CD. Dad loved his Clint Eastwood DVD Boxset as well in fact he even managed to put it the DVD player and play it amazingly. Well left for a "few" hours to see my other sister and nephew since well you know they ain't on speaking terms yet. Nephew as per NORMAL was spoilt rotten but he's worth it (most of the time). Hmm amongst other things he got a Gameboy Advanced + several games to go with it, A Robosapien V2 (this was to make up for last year when the Robosapien he got didn't ****ing work - dispite a new controller and that being sent - this year it was tested before hand ;) ), a table football game which he set up on the floor and played with anyone that came too close (bending rules to suit him of course), and various other things like a MegaBloks F1 Racing car that well he'd hinted at just a little while ago hmm guess someone heard him (major Kudos to me:D). Instead of 2 hours I ended up staying 4 - oh well had dinner there as well which was much more fun than dinner at home would have been (trust me on this one folks!).
Oh what did i get hmm well 2 litres of Bailey's Irish Cream :), a Winter Car Care kit which is coming in real handy right now (it's gonna be cold tonight -6C [21F]), a powered hand shaving kit, hmm smelly stuff as per normal and a Suduko Computer Game and after me getting my digital camera - I didn't get very many photos hmm shall have to work on that one..
Oh notice anything different about the blog? It's a clue to another gift I got, but can you work it out?

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to all my readers. I'll still be around but hmm I think Im busy christmas day. I wonder why, hmm i think I'll be too busy taking photo's of my nephew opening all his presents with my new camera and eatin' and things like that to blog. I may even take a walk and try and get some nice shots of where I live need to take it out for a test drive anyway ;)...
Your in my prayers you know you are
"May Peace Walk Beside You and In Your Heart Always."
I know that could be hard but remember you may just make someones day with a smile.

The act of giving...

I'd like to thank Sharon for the lovely christmas card she sent me last week, I did meant to say I'd got it but erm forgot with everything else. I'd also like to thank my good friend Katt for her card. I'd also like thank Heather even although I don't have her card just yet. Hmm but it's not the actual act of recieving a card that matters even although both times and one more to come it did put a smile on my face. I mean simple things in life like a card, letter or phone call that can brighten someone's day even if they are the electronic versions of these e-card, e-mail, and voice chat. It doesn't matter the distance, the next street, the next town or 1/4 of the way around the world just remember it might just make someone smile :).
I use Aim, MSN Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger and hang out in Computers Lobby:1 you can find me on any of them if you know who to look for ;)
Merry Christmas all

A Quiz of Sorts

Well I listen to Radio 1 and the Scott Mills show has a part of the show called "Rate My Listener" which is exactly what the rest of the listeners do, the listener sends in a photo of themselves, it's put up on-line at bbc.co.uk/radio1 and you follow the links normal - this is a direct link. He also gets the dear listener on the phone and asks them a few questions about themselves etc.. Im going to attempt to recreate this quiz kinda, your answers in comments please, this is a random sample of questions asked.

1. What would your ideal date be?
   


2. If I was coming round for the day, say bottle of wine, watch some TV / DVD, what you cook?
   


3. Who would your ideal man/woman be?
   


4. If you had to "bat for the otherside", who would your ideal woman/man be?
   

Im sure I'll think of more to add...

Got an Early Christmas Present

Santa came early this year for me, well actually I gifted this to myself, it's a rather nice
Olympus Camedia C-765. Well What ya think eh? I'd appreciate comments on this one please.

A Question of Raindeer

You can blame Moogie for this.

You Are Comet

A total daredevil, you're the reindeer with an edge! Why You're Naughty: You almost gave Santa a heart attack when you took him sky diving Why You're Nice: You always make sure the sleigh is going warp speed

Which of Santa's Reindeer Are You?

Breaking News..

This just in, I've been updating a few files and well one of them was my Greetz list which now works in IE, Firefox and Netscape (most of the time) might wanna check it out see what I've done with it ;)

Have ya Heard?

They gone and done it now, the Politically Correct Brigade has gone TOO Far this time!
Why I hear you ask?
They've gone and Messed with the Winnie the Pooh stories.. They are replacing Christopher Robin with a girl who's more of a tom boy than a girl - FFS your messing with a classic..
Please leave yer views on this on.
Good Idea or Bad Idea, ie would A.A. Milne be happy or has the planets orbit gone a bit wobbly since he started spinning in his grave. I mean christopher robin was the writers son how can they MESS with this?

I did have a post to write about

I did, honestly have a good post to write but hmm as is oh so typical - no blogger didn't eat it, I was writing it and doing 3,4,5 things at once and the poor thing just locked up and thus had to be reset so thus lost the post. I don't think I could do the post justice right now but I'll think on it and well post about it at a later date. See I am still alive and posting.

How did I get here?

Ok how random a post title is that and how random is this for a post? You can sort of blame Wahwer & Melonie for this, kind of anyway. I was chatting this morning to my good friend & colleague at work, Susan. We were just chatting about random things, when I go "How Stupid can I be!" (Moogie, Sharon, Melonie & Wahwer - don't even THINK it!!) Refering to a piece of info I'd asked someone for and realised I actually just needed to go look it up again as it's not written down anywhere not even on my PC, how strange eh!
So this then launched somehow into a potted history of how I got to know Melonie, Wahwer, Sharon & Moogie as well as the rest of y'all. I think this is going to be a series of posts about my life (not sure yet) a bit along the lines of my Honesty post. So how did I end up with a blogspot blog anyways? Well I could go back to '92 but for now we don't need to go that far just yet. I'll go back to '99 instead. This was when I didn't have gainful employment, was on a government funded training course to get me my wonderous NVQ Level III in IT. This is also back when I got my first pc thanks to my good mate stu, it wasn't the Ub3r 1337 thing I have now! It was only a little P1 150 with I think 32Mb of Ram, 1Gb of HDD and running Win 98. I met my good friend and tutor Richard on this course and he persuded me to start doing something useful with my pc, start "crunchinG" SETI@Home work units. The first took 80hrs and I thought why! We then discovered a faster smarter way to crunch them and it took me only 25hrs to do 1. My good friend stu gave me a free upgrade to a shiny AMD K6-3-400 with more HDD space and more ram. Now I'd joined up in the same team as my mate Richard and we weren't doing too well as well being as the team were a subteam of Uber Geek Squad - Arse Technica - Team Lamb Chop to be exact. We then formed our own team before finding Team Free-DC just the kinda team for us. We both then eventually moved to other project as we found out there was more to do than just SETI, I got to know Moogie through Richard and well e-mail and comments left on moogie's blog and my Dear Diary pages. I only had a DD thanks to the persistance of my adopted lil sis and good friend Jen. I then read Moogies post about sharon and her struggle to help Bing, Chatter and Leo in the world. I again left comments, was asked if I minded comments being left, e-mails being exchanged not me. So I eventually moved to Blogspot and set up shop so to speak. That's where I got to know Melonie, and through her, sharons & Moogies blog got to know Heather, Chase, DB, Fiesty, Miss Zooty, Zonker, Acidman, Dax, Ward and whole heap more besides (even if I don't leave a comment I may read your blog now and then). I then one day clicked on Wahwer's blog and well things have never quite been the same. I don't regret anything I've done then, okay maybe some of you will disagree and I'm sorry if I've upset anyone with my actions (many of which don't see the light of the blogsphere). I suppose you could say I'm a bit like an over enthusiastic puppy dog, eager to please and bounding about with loads of energy, I suppose I can say I can be a bit full at times, but that's me..

Hugs to ya all, and don't think you can hide, just come here and get your hug it won't hurt a bit.

Power Blip Panic!

Well I got home, noticed that the programs I had set running on my PC weren't running! Thought hmm it's reset - it's got a virus / spyware / trojen / malware etc.. Thought maybe not but run system checks anyway.. Check another PC - it's was sitting at the XP log in screen (gotta love remote admin that loads as a service before anything!) logged me in, checked the other pc's the same thing. Thought hmm power blip! I was right just enough to make lights flicker but long enough to make PC's go reset :(. Oh and the drive home wasn't much fun either...

It's Snowing!

Yup it's offical it's snowing in my part of the World..
It's just a little bit (well anything under 3 feet is just a little bit to some people :P)
Well I've actually had to move my PC temporarly back to my room from the attic due to this as well it's too cold for the poor thing, that will teach me for misplacing the cover for it. It was well lets just say unless I had the thing running full pelt i.e running the D2oL project it well crashed, reboot......rebooot.......reboot sometimes it would get to windows splash screen often not. So it got moved so I could check it in a warmer place. It works fine - darn cold.

Even I get it wrong sometimes..

Okay confession time. Time for me to fess up to a recent Balls up I did which resulted in this here pc Im typing on, being left in a state of non-bootable ness..
Here's the story, Im love Win 98se (I know it's old hat now but It works, does all that I need it to do, and I can protect it way easier than XP). I decided to go install XP so I thought I'll duel boot the thing with 98 (defaulting to boot 98 if no key is pressed). I decided last night that hmm I can upgrade to XP from 98 as it's got a wizard and stuff to do it for me, so why not "copy" my current windows setup to the same space as I have XP on - wiping out XP 1st, and then remove XP's boot loader type thing. I did all that, removed the bootloader files (oh silly me!), used my trusty (or so I thought) Win98se Bootdisk that should boot me nicely into a Command Prompt to let me type the 2 commands I knew I needed to do... Only for it to say "Error unable to read file MODE.com page not prepared" etc.. darn Disk Corruption! which left me with a problem as it couldn't actually read and unpack files it needed to the Ram Drive it had created so I couldn't type the following commands:
FDISK /MBR <- this fixes the Master Boot Record to be marked as 98se bootable
SYS C: <- to copy over the Windows 98se system files and make it bootable once more..
Didn't have the time to mess around with attempting to make a boot disk on the 2 other PC's I have that run 98 as well erm they are linked via a Keyboard/Video/Mouse Switch that does it's job but can be a bit of a pain - Me thinks me didn't follow instructions right (Typical!) so I machine been offline all day and has done no work for my Team (Free-DC) and no work in the project this machine does (D2oL - Drug Optomization Lab), Argh there goes a 1/3 of my daily output... Not Much really is it.. But a few units here and there, I will remember next time.. Now just to get Win XP to "upgrade" my 2nd "Install" of windows I hope it works else Im gonna be pissy with it.

For Some Strange Reason....

For some unknown reason I decided to check my guestmap (hmm noticed it was fairly empty - HINT!!)..
Noticed Wahwer's Entry and wondered why exactly it meant.. Hmm then for some unknown reason the song "Country Roads......" came in to my head and I just had to listen to it. That does it 1st place I visit in the US, IF I ever have the money, time and inclination - hmm I can muster 1 of them, the other 2 are harder!.

Suggest ya Go listen to the song and just Smile ;)

Hmm chillin' out (literally!)

Hmm reason for low post rate, well it's getting colder here and hmm been busy adding insulation to various places so I can stay warm(er) than it is outside..
I'll let you know how it goes once I've Finished it all off ;)

I blog there for I am.

Weel Im sorry chase that ya dinnae understand ma lingo, bit weel it's kinna hard tae read yon southern bit I manage nae bother, ken. Oh wait ye'll nae ken will ye, ya've nae idea whit Im on aboot dae yea.
Noo i kid go on bloging in broad scots bit a think I'll gee it a bye. That's better it's not actually that easy to type in broad scots believe it or not you really have to think what it is your typing and how exactly the word is spelt, now that sounds like simple don't it, it's not being as I am used to speaking it but not writing it.. This could of course be worse, I could as easily attempt to write this in Gealic but even I would have difficult understanding it, or worse yet Doric which is a bit like Gealic but they speak it around about Aberdeen and the like. Now Britian is really nice it has well lets see now 6 languages all of it's own, maybe a few more if you count localisations of english. Well we have English, Scots (localization), Gealic, Doric, Irish and Welsh. So watch out because next time i may not post in english :P I may post in welsh or irish, probably welsh although Im sure one read would annoy me by pointing out all my mistakes I make in welsh, but I'll let her off as she's allowed ;).
Oh I am still alive and with it, just have had nothing to report well saying that the server at work throw a disc, not nice it's not responding at all even when something that should have worked was done it didn't - blames the stupid ass that set the thing up in 1st place for sticking OS and Data in the same Raid set, but enough as I don't wanna go over too many heads..

I've Fixed it (well just about maybe)

I've fixed it or at least put a work around in that will force the issue ;) gotta love javascript and the ability to write bits of the entire page on the fly ;). Basically It's a "hack", a fix, a patch, it checks to see if your using IE and writes one style for sidebar otherwise it writes another (proper one :P) darn IE and it's PITA CSS stuff.

Okay Here's what It should look like...

I've grabbed a snapshot of the blog as looks to me as I write this post...

This is a thumbnail link so you can click to view fullsized 1024x744 image..

I've been playing some more...

I've fixed the font size problem and I think it's looking good, the colors actually work now might just need a minor tweak but I think it's looking good.. little tweak here and there and minimalistic imaging :)

I've been playing

Okay I've been playing around with my template, I had a few ideas and got them to work independantly from blogger so I shoved them in, i know the colors are all out but I'll fix it as soon as I figure out the colors I want and the sizes and well lol....

Argh!

Okay I give up I'm just gonna bloody well find a template close enough to what I want an re-do and then add back in what i have on my sidebar..
Any hint tips or otherwise point me, else say nothing!

It's Oooooooonnnnnnllllllllllllyyyyyyyyy Ffffffriday...

Well it is Friday, darn it I've seen this quiz in a few places and well darn it I thought what the heck - I'm a fruit n' nut case anywayz - no need to comment I know I am.
I am the following Fruit


You are a Pomegranate...unconventional, unique, and
just a little bit tart...you know how to make a
lasting impression and often do so with your
zest for life...


What Kind of Fruit Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

In Light of Recent Posting (Pt. 3)

Okay Now for Part 3, I think you have absorbed the other parts (or your ignoring them totally cos your a smug git!)
Okay Now to get you away from the spyware causing program Internet Explorer (which I only use to read my Hotmail (via MSN Messenger) and Launch.com for radio stations since it dont' work well Firefox due to them being RETARDED!

1. Go Get Firefox Here


2. Install it


3. Run it


4. It will import all your IE cookies, passwords, Favourites etc Over :)


5. Go to tools Menu & Click Extensions then get more extensions in the bottom right


6. Grab what you think you might want,
   
   like Adblock - Get it Here it's the latest version
   
   Download Manager Tweak - nice tool lets you put the downloads as a tab rather than a seperate window
   
   Foxy Tunes - Lets you Play your favourite player from within firefox - I use it for Winamp controling - setup is a bit tricky.
   
   PDF Download - lets you save the pdf to your HD rather than load it - gives you the option :)
   
   Forcast Fox - need I say anymore ;) Nice Tool
   
   Media Player Connectivity - Smooths out a few bugs with some sites and Firefox if you don't got Media Player 9+ installed.
   
   Play Launch - Fools Launch.com and lets you play videos with MPC
   
   Blog This - Tool of use to us bloggers Im sure lets you grab bit to blog not 100% sure on this tool not really played around with it.
   
   Oh and View in IE - just in case for old time sake


7. Once you got all the Extentions you want - Go grab some nice themes, oh and anything you install to firefox requires you to close and restart firefox for it to be available.


8. If you download adblock, you may also wanna download this adblock list and import it - Tools > Adblock > Prefernces > Adblock Options > Import and load the file (saves you having to write all them darn hard regular expresions)

Now I've got you off IE and on to a nicer browser - watch how your blog breaks maybe..
Okay Onto Firewalls and the like, Me I use Zone Alarm Pro from Zonelabs, there is a free version or you can evaluate the Pro version, it's at least 10x better than XP's firewall, evan the free one is way better and both will stop stuff that XP won't but it might bug you to begin with when it's not got all the stuff you use that requires net access - instantly be able to tell if you have a trojen / virus though ;).Suggest you read the help that comes with it to understand it fully.
Now there are many virus scanners out there but well heck even Norton's Own Tech support says Norton Anti-Virus (NAV) is crap - So Avoid, McAfee is good but you pay for that, AVG is good free, you can pay to get the Pro version with addition features:). There are free "online" scanners and virus removal tools generally you got a specific Problem you google the "problem" and you find a fix. Once you get the AV keep it up to date
Trojens are a pain but I think between Spybot SnD, Adaware, a good Anti-virus solution you should be able to avoid them but there is a program called "The Cleaner" by Moosoft that will scan and clean them trial available but you need to buy this not free.
Okay I think I've cover it and given you a free firewall, browser + tools, Anti-virus, spyware scanner, and an ad removal tool all free :) (or nearly free).

Blogger Templates

Anyone got any ideas, I've decided to screw the idea of having a Template with tartan in it in fact the idea of any Images other that my what I put on the blog as images, basically no images just colors ideas in comments please.

In Light of Recent Posting (Pt. 2)

Okay Now on to Adaware SE

1. Download & Install Adaware SE here it's free also - gotta love good freeware.


2. Run the software on first run / if not been run for a while it will tell you that the defintions file is x days old do you want to update, update it


3. Click Start, 1st run do a full scan, subsequent runs do a smart scan but go make a coffee while it's scanning.


4. Once it's done it will show you number of objects found and what types they are, click "Next"


5. It will give you a list ignore "Negligible Object" just click on the box(es) with Critical objects in them and click "Next"


6. IT will show a ? box with X objects will be removed. Continue? Click "OK" and your done

Now remember to regularly run both Spybot SnD and Adaware to keep the system in top condition, updating both as needed and Immunizing with Spybot SnD..
Next... Antivirus Solutions and Firewalls oh and a nice browser that actually works and is fast Firefox (Incase you ain't used it yet)

In Light of Recent Posting (Pt. 1)

In light of a post I made at BWTP and the fact that some people's machines run slower than they should I've put together a small plan

1. Download & Install Spybot Search n Destory it's free.


2. Run Spybot - click on Search for Updates and check all the update boxes Download updates.


3. Hit Immunize it will say something like 0 bad products blocked 2160 possible Click "Immunize" at the top and it will Immunize, put a check mark in "Enable permanent blocking of bad addresses in Internet Explorer"


4. Now for some work, Click the "Search & Destroy" Button in the left panel and hit "Check for problems", let this run it will find anything that shouldn't be there..


5. Once it's done it's work, you can see what it's found click on "Fix selected Problems" and let it fix them, sometimes it can fix them due to the spyware being smart and having windows load and lock the file as in use, let it scan again on startup.

Coming up Next
Adaware SE.

Tuesday Already I think.

Hmm well lets see now it's apprently Tuesday well now technically on write this is wednesday but erm Monday well let's just say I've had better days at work, having to work when Ill is no fun at all - but no-one to cover me if I go home kinda means I just gotta wing it and pray I stay in once peice 24hr bug thing again, I won't go into details just that hmm my stomach disagreed with a few things I ate that day to try and calm it down also headache didn't really go away either :( As for Today (well yesterday now) 12hr shift that's right you do the math it's after midnight and so thus I've been up about 17 hrs feeling much better today obviously thank god, So no need to worry they ain't ready to cart me of just yet. I think that would take a lot I came kicking and screaming into this world (I was quiet but well i was fight another battle - being the small new kid on the block was a tough job back then).
Words now banned on this blog until futher notice are the "W" word aka W O R K... it's banned in any shape or form so I won't be talking about it from now on..(please not blog may get boring but heck I won't need to start muttering curses sometimes)
L8rs

Sunday Sunday

Well that was a fun 6hrs at work, had to relax so been playing World of Warcraft for past few hours. It's also a friend of mine's 21 so well let's just say Melonie ain't the only who's gotten flowers from me this year. One in a list of many.. Well what can I say it's a 21st don't happen that often do they..
I had an idea for a post but hmm it's gone..
Oh Chase I think the clock should read right now if it don't then the darn well code is gonna have to have a major re-write :|

The Week So Far.

Well let see the week so far.
Monday: Worked 7-7 half asleep looking, feeling shit but I made it, local holiday and It was my turn to work it.
Tuesday: Worked 7-9 and then got sent home but the Boss, got home, went to bed watched a few DVD's, had some food, felt better..
Wednesday: Worked 7-4 back to normal hours only to fucking find out I may have to work Sunday Mornin' :| I'm saying NO More.
Sharon is alive and posting :)
Thanks Boss.

Sunday Evenin'

Well it's now sunday evening and well this is the first time I've actually felt okay enough to post anything. Let's just say it's been one of those days, I did wake up at 9 with a clear enough head (just about - hmm last time I drink white wine - might not have been the cause). I decided to get some more sleep, got up about 1pm (i know terrible) had some tea and toast, came on here to see who was about and read a few new posts and to post something of my own and I basically had to go back to bed as well I felt sick :( head was pounding and I ached in a few places. I'm just about there now, after being sick and managing to find something i could eat. I feel human again just about. I have to be up at 5:30am tomorrow as Im working (even although it's a holiday and Im sure I was meant to get this one off - but hmm somehow I got the last one as I was on holiday [didn't deliberately do that]). Grrr to all day working, well that and the fact on early shift all week.. Good luck to Sharon for her operation tomorrow.