Archive for the ‘Life’ Category

Got home last night to find my exhaust was hanging off the bottom of my car.

This is the new exhaust I had fitted a month or two ago so I wasn’t overly amused. After having duct taped it back in place this morning I phoned my local branch of Alba and explained one of their other branches had put me it on and it was now hanging off and could they fix it.

They said no.

Apparently they also use different suppliers and have to go through those supplies so if I took it down there, they would then phone the branch that did the work and get them to order the part then once they had it it would be sent to the branch I was now at before they could do the work.

So I phoned up the branch that originally did the work who said bring it down and they would get it looked at.

This is where it all goes a bit wrong for the blog post really because shock of all shocks – I had a good experience with a garage! I took it down there on my lunch break and though I spent ten minutes just waiting for them to get round to me once they said they sorted it out for me and didn’t try to charge me either.

It kind of ruins the whole tone of the blog post really as I wrote the first half this morning before taking it down to them expecting to have loads more to rant about, but I don’t. Well done Alba, I guess.

If I did want to continue the rant however I could easily point out that these victories shouldn’t be so rare in modern life. I seem to spend most of my lunch breaks running around trying to fix one thing or the other – the extended blog post about housing that should hopefully arrive in the next few weeks (I’m waiting until it’s sorted so don’t hold your breath) is testament to that. Life shouldn’t be full of all these problems. It shouldn’t be a fantastic day when something is actually sorted as it should be. Still, that is the modern world I guess. Today was a good day.

Tonight saw the usual Tuesday night Atheist Society social which again delivered a fairly recent turnout given that it is the summer holidays and nobody is around. More importantly they managed to put some dressing on my burger this week which was most welcome 😉 .

Headed out to The Library for Sunday lunch today, ended up staying there for most of the afternoon before heading down to Oracle on the canel. We ended up finding the Waterfront Festival which had a live band on so we ended up spending some time sat in the sunshine on the waterfront watching the band.

Today is an anniversary. It’s been five years since I made my first blog post. Back in the day it was on Nerd Federation and I’m not even sure if I really knew what blogging was but since then I’ve go on to write over 1,700 posts on my personal blog alone as well as for dozens, maybe even hundreds of other blogs.

It’s interesting to see the generational shift between us and the previous generation. I, and I’m sure people like Will and Kieran feel similarly, love my blog as it is a fantastic opportunity to share our thoughts, opinions and adventures with the world. And besides, who needs privacy anyway ;).

There only being a few of us by 6pm we headed over to The Box for a few drinks. It made for interesting conversations with Rob being the boss, Lachlan leading the PHP development and Matt leading the Flex development as well as discussions of a global nature with Rob being Irish and Lachlan being Australian.

I really enjoyed by time at Open Door but I really do appreciate the geek that Buzz has – especially when you’re boss comes to work in a Squeezebox t-shirt.

Thursday saw Moz and Sarann come on their first HAG outing. While it wasn’t the best of nights with it having poured down a few hours before there were at least some people out and about so it wasn’t a wasted night. Better than Sophie & Jon’s first time!

After doing some good for the community we decided to head to The Original Oak to do some good for ourselves – by taking advantage of grill night. While you were never going to get an amazing mixed grill for £6 including a drink it was never the less more than enough to fill me and indeed very good food given the price.

Today saw HAG expand in a new direction as we headed out to remove some of the graffiti in Hyde Park. It turned out to be really succesful, snowballing when a bunch of random kids from the block turned up and decided to help out – crazy times!

Despite flagging turn outs to recent Tuesday night summer socials, we ended up getting around a dozen people down to The Library tonight, possibly given more life by the recent camping trip but hopefully something that will continue throughout summer.

On getting back to Ingleton after the waterfall trail on Saturday we found ourselves in the middle of a 1940’s wartime recreation with everyone walking round in army uniforms or civilian period costumes.

Apparently the whole town gets involved – we wandered into a pub with lots of British flags and bunting lining it which I just presumed was a BNP rally but apparently that was part of the “recreation” too.

Myself and Lil debated at some length whether we were dead Silent Hill style or whether we had travelled back in time, or indeed even just accidentally wandered onto a holodeck. Namely because the 1940’s day had clearly been going on for some time and apparently wasn’t finishing that day either (it was all still there when we went past on the Sunday too).