Farewell car - an update

So I visited the crash compound to clear the car out, and took the opportunity to take some more shots.



I have to say, in the cold light of day the damage was more severe than I remembered.
Anyway, the upshot is that today I received a call from my insurers....and she's been written off.

That's the bad news.

The good news is that my insurers, who have proved so far to be absolutely fantastic, have made a much better offer than I was expecting, so I won't lose out as much as I anticipated.

My back's still stiff and sore, and I've got to get it checked out again - but having seen the damage, quite frankly I'm glad I was able to walk out of the car rather than get carried out!

So this weekend, I'm car-hunting (again). I'm resisting the urge to buy one of these so the next person who clobbers me comes off worse!

Farewell, sweet Car, I hardly knew you!

One day, the law of averages is gonna get you.

Yesterday was that day. Nine years of accident-free driving...gone.

Plus, I had the exciting experience of being strapped to a spinal board and spending two hours staring at a hospital ceiling.

Thankfully, no bones were broken and no blood gushing, but I'm gutted - I'd only had that car about 6 weeks!

Still, it's not my fault - and the nice gentleman who parked his Vauxhall Zafira in my boot didn't come off too well either. . . .


And for bonus points, the long line of 'indeterminate fluid' between the skid-marks, veering to where he stopped, indicates his radiator's fscked. Or he just lost control of his bladder. Oh, I do hope so. Either way, perhaps in future he'll look at the road in front of him.

Click on either of the images for larger versions in all their gory detail...

So I'm waiting for the hire car to arrive, and counting my blessings that I only suffered bruising and a whack of stiffness.

And as I lay in bed last night, my only regret was that I hadn't put my phone in 'voice record' mode when I got out of the car - his first words were "sorry, I didn't notice how slow you were going"! Admission of liability, anyone?

A Post at Last!

It's odd - there's been so much going on in the news recently.

The 'Jowellgate' affair. . .Bush and the Katrina Briefings. . . Lib-Dem <> Leadership Conteszzzzz (sorry, dozed off for a moment there). . .The financial crisis in the NHS. . .daily murders and bombings in Iraq. . .

The list is endless, and in earlier times I'd have been on here posting all night, venting my outrage and pouring vitriol on those responsible at all levels. Yet not now.

Why, I hear you ask?

Well - to be honest, I just can't summon up the rage any more.

A lot's happened to me in the last 6 months. Some of the events were, and continue to be, very painful emotionally. But out of the sadness has come a great deal that is good - in fact, better than my life has been for some considerable time, if ever.

When your life is unhappy, it's easy to seek outlets for the suppressed rage. Those outlets may be, and frequently ARE, totally unconnected with one's own situation.

Conversely, when things are good - in fact, very good indeed - there's no rage to need expression. So while I still watch the news avidly, and while I still comment on it personally and remain involved in relevant campaigns, I don't feel the need to scream any more.

So I'm sorry to those who used to look forward to my rambling political diatribes - this may no longer be the place for you. I plan to diarise the good things in my life from this point on.

On that note, I'm looking forward to heading off to CeBIT this year, where I'll be manning our stand from 13-15 March. I'm planning to take loads of photographs and, if I can get online enough, to post on some of the cool kit I see.

Watch this space . . .

The Beginning of the End?

Well, we can hope. . .

The Bulldog Manifesto. . .

. . has a link to the John Birch Society poll asking whether Dubya should be impeached.

Go there. Vote.

The results make for interesting reading - as, indeed, does Bulldog's entire Blog.

Blair unveils his 'respect' plans

Now THIS is amusing.

Bliar has talked before about creating a 'culture of respect' in this country.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm all for reducing crime and antisocial behaviour - fewer Chavs on the street would be a good start - but sadly, what Bliar fails to grasp is the concept that a culture of respect should start at the top.

He could start by respecting the Electorate he serves (ooh, I don't know - perhaps by maybe NOT STARTING AN ILLEGAL WAR FOR OIL). Alternatively, how about respecting his parliamentary peers - perhaps by reinstating two sessions of Prime Minister's Questions rather than just the one?

I know - he could try respecting the institutions of Government and Democracy by ceasing plans to limit civil liberties, and dropping ID Cards?

But we all know the truth.

For Bliar, 'respect' means the people of this nation doing what HE wants, and not noticing the high tax burden, failing education system and massaged NHS waiting times.

I can tell you one thing. He'll get no respect from me. Ever.

A Call to Impeach Tony Blair. . .

This is quite a turn-up.

When a respected, veteran soldier decides to become embroiled in politics, and calls for the impeachment of the Prime Minister, surely - SURELY - people must take notice?

I won't bore you by recounting the lies, mistruths, propaganda, dirty tricks and spin - the sordid history of the buildup to, and conduct of, the invasion of Iraq is well known and documented.

But at a time when the leader of an Opposition party resigns because denial made his position untenable, surely the incumbent Prime Minister should be made to answer for decisions and actions that resulted in deaths, maimings and the escalation of acts of terror on UK soil?

Without getting into it too much, Charles Kennedy was right to go - his repeated denials of an alcohol problem, now proved to be falsehoods, called his integrity into question. He showed courage finally admitting his alcoholism, and (albeit under duress) took the right decision in resigning the leadership of the Liberal Democrats.

Yet Bliar and other Cabinet members have had their integrity torn to tatters by the Iraq invasion, but still continue to 'lead' this country and preside over the destruction of civil liberties - all in the name of 'democracy' and a 'War on Terror' that they themselves exacerbated.

General Sir Michael Rose is an experienced soldier, whose courage has been proven on the battlefield. Now he has proven his mettle again, standing up and speaking out when all we normally hear are the voices of Bliar's fawning sycophants.

I hope (against hope) that this is the real start of a groundswell - that Bliar, Straw, Blunkett, Hoon and their US counterparts will be made to answer for the lies, the deaths and their decision to prosecute an illegal war for dishonest reasons.

PlusNet? More like MinusNet!

The more astute among you may note that there have been a couple of changes here.

Firstly - no posts since 21 December - and secondly, I'm back on Blogspot for these pages.

Why?

Well, the main reason - in fact, the ONLY reason - is PlusNet.

Line activated with lovely 2Mb speed, 20 December.

Unable to connect - 23 December. And it's been the same since.

Using a dialup backup is just NOT how I want to spend my time, especially when I'm paying for the privilege of a service I'm not getting!

So far, it's been back to BT twice, 'whoosh tests' twice (both inconclusive), three complete reinstalls of the modem software, and innumerable reboots and connection attempts, all to no avail.

I'm starting to get to the point where if I don't get DSL back soon, I'll be performing a few 'reboots' myself, if you catch my drift.

On the upside, Christmas was fantastic, spending time with my parents and my sister, who I just don't see enough of. New Year was spent in a quirky hotel in Oxford - would you believe a converted prison? I'll upload some pics later on once I can get them onto my own webspace.

And here we are now, in 2006 - and I'm hopeful that this year will prove to be better, overall, than the one just gone.

Proof that even the Clued can be Clueless. . .

It had to happen. . . .

I've ended up doing techie duties again here at $WESELLCOOLHARDWARE. The sorry saga follows, with names excised to protect the hugely guilty. . .

Flashback. Thursday last week. Someone an infected attachment. Cue install of W32.Mytob.CZ.

Friday. The Technical team (who are hardware uberhackers) take the network down to disinfect it. $TECHNICALMANAGER decides it would be a great idea to change our network config at the same time, so uninstalls MS ISA Server.

With no access to the router.

Then tries to install Sygate Personal Firewall on an operational 2K SBS server.

So as of Monday, we have no Web access, no email, no access to shared folders, no Skype, no MSN. . .

Lunchtime Monday. The Boss sets me on the case. Only I'm not allowed to bring anyone in to help. Cue 9 hours on the phone with Microsoft, finally leading to . . . nothing. No further forward than when I reinstalled ISA myself.

Microsoft Support the Monty Python way - I'm banging a dead parrot on the counter, and they're swapping counters to see if that solves the problem!

Anyway, I finally got permission from The Boss to bring someone in.

One change of router and network reconfiguration later, we've got everything up and running. 4pm Tuesday.

And this morning - no mail. Outbound is fine, internal fine, but nothing coming in.

This, of course, is my fault. According to The Boss.

Blech.

A busy day ahead.

But first, some geekery....I'm still waiting for DSL to be activated, and living on dialup is driving me nuts. The current expected activation date is 20 Dec, the hardware's arrived, so now it's just a matter of waiting. I'll be SO glad to get back to a decent connection speed!

I'm trying to get a web-based calendar going - and get it all downloaded, organised, check the permissions - and then find I need to upload it to the CGI space I get from Plusnet. But - and here's the fun bit - can I access said space?

No. No FTP, no telnet, and a 403: Forbidden if I even try and surf to the empty page. Now I can understand the 403 - there's no index page set up, so it's trying to access an empty directory - but if I can't FTP, can't telnet, can't upload anything to the directory, it's precisely bugger-all use!

In other news, it's off to the shops today to do the pressie run. That should be fun.

And I'm picking my friend up from the airport tonight, as well. 3 weeks cycyling across Southeast Asia - she is, of course, utterly insane.

A Brief Web Presence

Hmmm. . .Probably the shortest-lived webpage ever...up, viewed (by me) and down in about 2 minutes.

Why?

Frontpage. Blech.

It looked awful, wouldn't work properly with ANY stylesheet other than one of its own set templates, barfed when I tried to change the categories, and gave me a range of folders I didn't want.

And it's fscking Microsloth, so I couldn't BEAR the thought of someone I know doing Ctrl-U in Firefox and seeing M$ plastered all over the page source.

It's back to handwritten HTML then, and diligent study into the basics of using CSS.