Chainsaws At 100 Paces

I have a new obsession. The Microsoft Xbox 360 games console.

It all happened quite by accident really. My son has long since commandeered my old Sony PS1 console, which I rarely used anyway. This was followed by a Nintendo GameCube about two years ago, which I bought from a friend of a friend for virtually nothing. For a long time I’ve wanted a PS2, but thought I’d wait for the PS3, which still hasn’t arrived here in the UK yet.

When my Brother-in-Law (Chunky) moved in with us last year, he bought his Xbox 360 with him and I was impressed with the console & games. It was about this time I started looking around for a new mobile phone contract and discovered that many companies would throw in an Xbox 360 to sweeten the deal. I thought it would be rude not to sign-up.

My console arrived about two weeks ago and I haven’t managed to put it down since. Chunky and I spend most evenings killing our ‘On-Line’ friends with all manner of fancy weaponry. It’s a real scream and provides the much needed stress relief from my bike problems. Even my wife has found a game she likes, so almost everyone is happy.

I say ‘almost everyone’ because I haven’t told my Son about my new toy. Why? Because he would Hi-Jack it as he has done with all previous consoles and I would lose interest quite quickly. The other problem is that most of my games are wholly unsuitable for a 10 year old.

I will have to come clean eventually as I’m getting feed up with sneaking around when he’s (supposedly) asleep. I’m almost certain he knows about it, but he’s not saying anything yet.

Having just read the last two paragraphs back, I was stunned how sad they make me sound. I’m I a Man or a Mouse? I think I already know the answer to that question!

If there's anyone out there wanting to murder me in an 'On-Line' game of "Gear of War", you can find me on Xbox LIVE! as "TRANCE ELBOW".

See you there, but don't forget your Chainsaw.

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The Damage Appears To Be Greater Than I First Thought

At first I thought the damage caused to my bike during her excursion into my neighbours Hydrangea was limited to a broken mirror and a couple of scratches. This now appears to be an incorrect assumption as she now refuses to run properly.

I have spent the last two weekends trying to diagnose the fault and to best I have managed to come up with is too narrow it down to either the fuel or ignition systems. I’m very disappointed that I have failed. It’s a matter of pride that I (usually) have the ability to fix anything, but I’m currently completely stumped.

My local bike shop tells me that I’ve done all the things they would have tried and gave me a few more ideas. The best I’ve managed is to get her to run for a few seconds, in which time she sounds like a cement mixer and emits un-burnt fuel fumes from the exhaust. This is closely followed by the engine stalling.

As a consequence I’ve had to use the car the get to work, which is very boring and time consuming. I would use the train, but it’s so damn expensive. The bike shop should be picking her up tomorrow and hopefully I maybe back on the road next week.

I can’t wait to see how much it will all cost 8-(

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The Root Of All Evil

My dentist, a very competent Polish Gentleman, asked me if I’d researched the Internet regarding my ‘Root Canal’ treatment. Being an engineer with an enquiring mind (read as nosey) I do like to know how things work and would normally have done my homework to see what’s involved. However on this occasion I thought I’d leave it until after the event for fear of putting myself off. As it turned out I needn’t have worrying, as I received enough anaesthetic to down an elephant. Even my right ear went numb. After a couple of days had passed, the pain went away and I was able to consume cold drinks and chocolate with impunity.

All was well until last Wednesday when my newly hollowed out, re-shaped and temporary filled tooth decided to lose yet another piece. This time it was from the inside edge and it has broken off right down to my gum. The temporary filling has stayed in place and as far as I can tell, nothing has leaked into the interior of the tooth. I’m no expert, but I suspect that the tooth may now be irreparable. I shall find out on Thursday morning if it’s worth completing the treatment or whether I will loose it.

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Don’t Ignore A Broken Tooth, Even If It Doesn’t Hurt

About five years ago I was suffering tooth ache and visited a dentist for the first time since leaving school. The dentist took lots of X-rays and scheduled a return visit to sort it out. When I returned he fixed the offending tooth and gave me a quote for some other work he said was required. I didn’t much like the quoted price and decided as it no longer hurt that I wouldn’t bother.

A few months later I was suffering severe tooth ache to the extent that I couldn’t sleep most nights, so I returned. Due to ignoring the previous advice the amount of work required had grown. One of my molars was quite rotten and it was touch and go whether it could be saved, but he tried anyway.

Sometime last spring the afore mentioned molar began to self-destruct. I had pieces of tooth and filling coming out almost everyday. To my surprise it didn’t hurting until last June while my Wife was away. A friend of mine mentioned that he know a chemist which sold temporary filling kits, so I gave it a go and the pain stopped quite quickly.

Just before Christmas I finally went to the dentist to have it sorted out. My options are,

1. Pull it out
2. Receive ‘Route Canal Treatment’

I’m not keen on losing the tooth as I’m not especially old and I’m hoping to be requiring my teeth for a good few years yet. So I suppose it’ll be the canal digging route I should take. I figured that January is probably not the best time financially to be spending out money if I can avoid it. My plan was to put it off for a month or too.

This idea has proved to not be possible and I can no longer avoid the invertible as the night time pain has been keeping me awake. Last night I think I finally dosed off at about 4:30am after taking a cupboard full of pain killers. When the alarm went off at 6am, I felt like I’d been hit by a bus and returned to bed. When I eventually emerged from under the duvet it was 3:15pm and I felt human once more.

I have arranged for my dentist to start his digging tomorrow. Oooo am I not looking forward to that!

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The Mud Has Finally Been Banished

I have tonight run my bike out onto the new concrete driveway and let me tell you, it was a pleasure to not be knee deep in mud. The whole getting out process was amazingly easy and went without drama (or excursion to next doors bush).

It also gave me a first opportunity to fully assess the damage to my bike. It would appear that it is limited to the broken left side mirror. I fitted my non-Honda copy mirror and it’s not nearly as good as the original one. However, it was considerably cheaper than the genuine part.

Unfortunately, Chunky and I have been unable to fill in the small hole due to the appalling weather this week. Saturday is also out as both he and I will be working again.

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Driveway To Land A Jumbo Jet On

As I mentioned earlier, I have for the past 3 years been taking my bike across my front lawn twice a day. This has taken it toll on the grass and last Monday disaster stuck. I managed to fall over in the mud, depositing my pride & joy into my neighbours Hydrangea bush.

My Brother-in-Law (Chunky) said it was time I dealt with the problem and replaced the lawn with concrete. He’s a builder and volunteered his services. To this end I ordered 1 ton of type1 (crushed concrete), 1 ton of ballast and several bags of dust (cement), which arrived on Saturday morning. However, on Thursday afternoon I was asked to work on Saturday. It was implied that it wasn’t optional, so I had to agree. I wouldn’t normally think twice about accepting overtime, but the timing was not good.

By the time I returned home at 5pm, the skip was full of soil, there was a huge hole where the lawn had been a few hours earlier and my neighbours were not pleased with the tyre marks that the skip lorry had left in the grass verge. I don’t know! I turn my back for 5 minutes………

On Sunday it seemed a good idea to hire a mixer rather than attempt to do it all by hand. By midday we had used up all the ballast and cement, but the job was only half completed. The solution was a trip to B&Q to purchase 40x 25kg bags of ballast and 12x 25kg bags of dust. It took us quite some time to ferry all the materials back home.

We ran out of materials again at about 6pm and decided to call it a day. After all, it was dark and where do you get ballast from at that time on a Sunday evening?

There is only a small section about 4’ x 2’ left to complete now. The plan is to fill it in sometime during the week. This assumes the good weather holds up until then and hopefully by Wednesday I will be able to use my bike again.

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Office Murders In South London

Now the “Office Party” season has long since past, it would appear that it is now “Office Murder” season!

If you are female and work in an office in South West London on Saturdays, you should be worried. Last Saturday (13th Jan 2007) there were two women murdered in separate incidents, both in offices in South West London.

Details from BBC News Website -

Woman found dead in office block

Man arrested over 'office murder'

Is this a new trend? I certainly hope not. If there are any potential murderers reading this, may I suggest that you go to the pub on a Saturday instead. It’s a much better solution for all concerned.

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How Not To Finish Off Your Monday

Monday was fairly un-eventful, until the evening when I had a couple of little mishaps. Due to the recent weather our front lawn is very soggy. Currently it closely resembles a peat bog. Its condition hasn’t been helped any by the fact that I have to cross it to get my bike in and out. We have been in need of a driveway for more years than I care to remember, but we have never gone beyond the planning stages for financial reasons.

At about 11pm, ‘Chunky’ reminded me that I’d forgotten to get my bike in. I set up my ramp as usual and commenced the now familiar manoeuvres around the lawn. On my second trip across the front path, my bikes front tyre slid away from me and she went down onto the path. I managed to get her up, with some considerable effort on my part. There was even the odd ‘Four Letter Word’ thrown in for good measure. Fortunately, other than a dented pride and a scuff on the left engine case all seemed well.

I continued (a little out of breath) with my little front garden dancing, but very soon my bike was stuck in a mud filled rut. It proved impossible to get the front wheel out of the rut and up onto the bottom of the ramp. I just couldn’t transfer enough momentum to the bike through the handle bars. The solution seemed to be to push from the rack on the back. With careful balancing of the bike I managed to get the front wheel safely onto the ramp. Continuing with the careful balancing I was able keep to bike going straight up the ramp. Then it was time for another burst of energy to get the back wheel on. With a hefty push from the back my bike made a sharp left turn, over balanced and fell sideways into my neighbours Hydrangea bush.

After summoning help from Chunky, we eventually managed to get her upright and safely in. The excursion into the bush doesn’t appear to have caused any major damage, but I did lose the left mirror and there are a couple of scratches on the left side panel.

Tuesday morning I called my local Honda dealer and nearly fell over at the cost of a replacement mirror. The genuine Honda part is £46 plus vat!!!! In the end I found a mail order company in Swansea who could supply me with a copy for £17.99. Take a wild guess at which one I bought?

The up shot of this is that this weekend Chunky and I will be lying the afore mentioned driveway. Trouble is that I’ve had to work today (Saturday) and Chunky has started the digging without me. This has its pros & cons. By working I have avoided most of the digging, but I feel bad that I can’t be there to help. At least the overtime will pay for the skip and materials.

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Eat All You Can, But Please Don’t Chew The Tables

On Friday evening the Mrs. & I joined Chunky & his Girlfriend (Chunkette) for a meal in Brighton. It was at a Chinese restaurant (Wokmania) where you can eat all you like for a set fee. I had what was effectively a four course meal, consisting of two large plates of savouries and two deserts. After which we were all stuffed to the eye balls without any room for even a ‘Wafer Thin Mint’!

Since we were in Brighton and I just happened to have my camera with me, I thought it would be nice to get some night photos of the Royal Pavilion (link). Oddly enough not everyone was as keen on this plan as I was. As I pointed out to the others, the walk would help our enormous meal to go down. Still not convinced they followed me in the direction of the Pavilion.

It was easy enough to find and was beautifully illuminated, but due to the fact I hadn’t bothered to bring my tripod, difficult to get all my photos to come out sharp. I did get some nice pictures, but they could have been better. We were soon on our way back to the car and as I’d already mentioned, we all felt much better for the short walk.

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Post Christmas Lethargy

After my Christmas break, I’m really struggling to get back in the swing of things at work. Perhaps it’s a case of “January Blues”?

I’ve been back at work for 2 days now and not yet managed to find my groove. Tuesday I spent doing general tidying and e-mail sorting. Today I was planning to complete some design I need to finish, but I just couldn’t get into it. It’s now 3:45pm and I’ve run out of time, so I may as well leave it until tomorrow now.

Hopefully I’ll get my act together before the boss returns on Friday.

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Our Christmas Present to Us

I completely forgot to mention that we managed to pick up our new car just before Christmas. And here she is.

The collection didn’t go completely to plan though. After various documents had been exchanged, forms filled in and large wads of cash handed over, I was told the while they were cleaning the car one of the rear doors had decided it didn’t want to open. They had made a quick dash to Renault for a new clip and it had just been fitted. Not a problem I thought, that’s another problem I now wont have to deal with later.

While I collected all my bits up and used the facilities, the sales manager fetched the car round to the front of the showroom in readiness for the handing over ceremony. She re-entered the showroom looking a little concerned and whizzed pass me, straight into the service department. She shortly returned, explaining that a dashboard light thinks one of the doors is open, when it clearly isn’t.

At this point an engineer appeared, in the style of Mr. Benn’s favourite shopkeeper (as if by magic) and proceeds to remove a door panel. This was closely followed by much door opening & closing, gnashing of teeth and yet more panel removals. Our engineer come shopkeeper then disappeared again, as quickly as he’d appeared.

After some whispering in the shadows, it was decided that a new part would be required to rectify the problem. Unfortunately, this wont be available until after Christmas. Fair enough, I thought. I think I can manage with a small red light until then. So of I went in my shiny new toy as happy as a small child on Christmas morning.

It wasn’t until I was halfway home that I realised that because the car thinks one of the doors was open that the interior light will stay on all the time. Strangely, there is no way to turn it off either. No problem, I’ll just whip the bulb out until the replacement switch arrives. A great plan, with just one tiny flaw. By the time I had an opportunity to remove the bulb, it had been on for several hours and it hadn’t occurred to me that it may be hot. The resulting burns healed quite quickly considering.

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I've Got A Little Behind

No, I'm not being rude.

Due to the excitement of the festive season I have got behind with my blog. The time I should have used to catch-up on all those long forgotten tasks was used up doing lots of nothing and scoffing mince pies & chocolates.

Father Christmas was very kind to me this year and left me allsorts of useful goodies. These included a lovely shiny MP3 player, a monopod and of course the usual daft books and chocolates. One of the books was about the AA’s national car park survey, which was carried out by the President of the British Round-a-bout Society. I kid you not!

Boxing Day I developed the beginnings of a nasty cold, which kept me indoors for nearly a week. However, New Years day was bright & sunny so I decided to hit the sales. As it turned out the town centre was unusually quiet and most of the shops closed. Trust me to pick the wrong day to shop. At least I wasn’t able to spend much money.

It’s now 2^nd January 2007 and I’m back to the daily grind. All of a sudden everything seems gloomy with nothing exciting to look forward to. Just thoughts of ‘how do I pay the bills of Christmas?’. Even thoughts of the MCN London Motorcycle Show at the end of the month haven’t cheered me up … yet.

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