Rob's Ego Trip!
Just for me to admire...
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Bounced
I hate it when a cheque for work I'm doing freelance bounces...
MOT
I ended up getting the Rover through it's MOT in the end as when I told the garage that I was going to scrap it, they reduced the price by ?90! The car is worth more than what I paid to MOT it, so I figure that trade-in / selling is a good idea.
Flash of Inspiration!
Georgina has had a flash of inspiration and we think we've found a way to keep the Micra and get a new Almera too. Basically we refinance the Micra and don't use Nissan's finance deals and the monthly payments should be manageable.
If there's a problem, we can always drop the Sky subscription anyway... RIP Rover
MOT people came back with a full price for getting it through it's MOT: ?606.00. They also let me know that the CV Joints are wearing and will need replacement soonish. That'll be another ?300 ish...
So clearly it's not worth keeping the Rover. The question is now "can we pay for another car whilst keeping the Micra?" and I'm pretty sure the answer is no if we want to have the extension (we do!). Looking at the market, our situation and the money we have to spend, the candidates are either a Nissan Almera or a Toyota Corolla. Summer Wear!
Jon really likes the new T-shirts we bought for him this weekend. The one with the crab is the best one and, co-incidentally, it's his favourite colour! Bugger
Car failed it's MOT big time. Question we have to answer is whether it's worth spending the money to get it fixed or if to buy a new one to replace both cars. Obvious benefits of one car are the cost savings. However trading in the Micra at this point isn't especially good as we'll get a tenner for it after the HP is taken out...
Ideally, it'd be nice to get a new car for me and continue with the Micra. That's a tad expensive though and I don't think we have the cash. Massaging My Ego
Searching MSN for "rob" brings up this site as the number 1 result :)
If you do a search on yahoo.co.uk for the word "rob" and select "UK only", then I'm the number 2 result. A UK only search for "rob allen" makes me number 1 again :) Doesn't happen on Google though :( Accessibility
As an exercise, I decided to see if I could make the-allens.net homepage compliant with bobby. As you can see if you click the link, it is now. The page in question is a simplistic page with just a menu, a header, an picture and a line of text, but I still had to make changes...
The user-visible one is that I have added a | between each menu item at the top. This doesn't look too bad in my opinion, but is clearly not an option for all sites. I can see the point in that without separate it would look like one long link. However any text-to-speech reader would point out each word's link before speaking the next word and a text-based browser like lynx shows each link distinctly as you move the "current link" around. The other changes I made were clarifications behind the scenes:
Of course, the rest of the site isn't bobby compatible though it's usable in Lynx. When I do a re-write, I'll try and remember to sort it out then. Ice Cream!
Today was the first Ice Cream in the garden day of the year :)
St George's Day
Just like St Patrick's Day, only without the recognition by the nation...
I'm gonna have a beer or two tonight to celebrate anyway! webcollage
Jzw's webcollage.
Id Cards
David Blunkett said today that with biometric Id cards, you can't have multiple identities. He's living in cloud cukoo land. I read a piece a little while ago that put the whole unique identity idea into touch where it belongs. Seems that David Blunkett still hasn't read it...
The centralised database containing all the information about you (or someone like you) will get hacked and sold to nasty people. Then someone who the system thinks is you will do crimes and you will be arrested for them. At this point, the people in power who believe that the system is infallible will be able to "prove" that you did the crime because the system says so. With the current trend toward removing juries from trials and removing the right of appeal, some very scary things will happen in the future. Happy Birthday Your Majesty
Today is Her Majesty, The Queen's birthday.
It's also the day where Rowan Williams has stated the obvious. Obviously watching Tony Blair wriggle and squirm over where the Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq are has hardly been inspiring. Funnily enough, there was a report on the Today program this morning, saying that Michael Heseltine had commented yesterday that the fact that Tony Blair had done a u-turn over the European constitution referendum issue showed that he was losing his authority. Interesting times indeeed. Music Plasma
MusicPlasma is cool!
*laugh*VC++ Command Line Tools
Free from Microsoft!
A Typical Saturday
I ordered a toilet seat from Travis Perkins last week and went with Jon to Kidderminster to pick it up. Whilst we were there, we popped into the SVR station and saw a few trains. As Jon's been cooped up at home for the last 10 days with Chicken Pox, he had a really good time. In the afternoon, the weather picked up and so I mowed the lawn and did some other chores.
A9
As noted elsewhere, A9 is worth a look.
A visit to Sutton
All the way to Sutton for a meeting today to see the IS dept of a company. The trouble with a meeting like this is that the "decision maker" has decided to go with us and then IS notice and try to apply some control to the project and generally make life complicated for us. So meeting for an hour and half plus 6 hours travelling...
It's Over
Another long weekend is over. Hasn't felt like much of a holiday to any of us though.
Quarantine
It's interesting how you feel cooped up when you can't go out with Jon even if you wouldn't have taken him out anyway! Fortunately, the weather cleared up this afternoon and so we played in the garden. This considerably lighthened his spirits (and ours!) and made the day bearable.
Family
We had my parents, Jen, Tim and family over yesterday. The day had been planned for a while and as both Leah & Jack have had chicken pox, they all came over anyway. One consiquence of Jon's chicken pox was that we couldn't go out for lunch, so we brought in chinese. We very quickly discovered that our dining room is too small to seat 10! Roll on the extension..
Today we had a phone call to let us know that Georgina isn't immune to chicken pox :( Seems that the vacinnation she had last year didn't work... Thus, this morning was spent at the hospital getting an anti-body injection. Let's hope it works better. The smut-free DVDChicken Pox!
Jon's got chicken pox; poor mite's got spots!
Where's all the money gone?
I though that the Toney & Gordon show had pumped lots of money into the health service? It's been at least a year - possibly two by now since that announcement.
So why are there no spare maternity beds in Surrey, Berkshire, Hampshire, London, Buckinghamshire and Oxford? What really amazes me is this quote: "But you cannot always account for such unusual peaks in demand." Pregnanyc lasts around 40 weeks on average... you'd think planning wouldn't be that hard to allow for a spare maternity bed in each county... In other news, the baby carrier that was involved in the death of a child last week has been banned by Dudley council. I don't even want to start on this one. Quote: "It is alleged that in some circumstances, particularly if the child is left unattended or the product instructions are not adhered to, a baby may become entrapped within the canopy". It was in a nursery and the kid was unattended or the product wasn't used in accordance with the instructions?!?!? I mean come on! Would they ban the sale of baths because an unattended baby drowned in one? Flip side
After such a good day yesterday, today my productivity plummetted. I seemed to spend the majority of the day fighting with Microsoft Project Central in order to get my task list looking remotely like reality.
It all fell into place
at work today. All the work I did at home over the weekend worked and we got the beta out to the customer on time. I do like it when that happens. Of course I'd have preferred not to have worked over the weekend too :)
Promotion!
Champions of RFU Division One !
Chairman of the BBC
It seems that Michael Grade will be the next chairman of the BBC. Certainly, that's not a polictical appointment as he has lots of media experience. Hopefully, he'll do a good job and take the BBC onwards and upwards.
Manifesto Promise
Not worth a damn to this Government!
I don't have a strong view either way on variable fees for Universities. I am not impressed with yet another manifesto promise being pushed aside. In the first term, it was understandable; Labour were learning the rope and had to deal with legacy issues from the previous administration. There's no excuse this term though. |