Well, I’ve finally got round to installing one of the new browsers…. namely Firefox 2.0. I’ve had a flawless relationship with it for the past 2 years. It’s um… very much the same as the previous version. I’m sure there are hundreds of reasons why the upgrade is necessary, but I’ve yet to reach a situation where I’ve been bored enough to actually look them up.

Speaking of bored, yesterday I completed the longest shift I’ve ever done. All 13 hours of it, thanks to the clocks going back.

It is very possible that I may have cried once during it.

Anyway, speaking of bored, I was bored enough to notice something. The fire safety notices at my workplace are sexist. Observe:-

Just look at them. Who says men can’t burn the grub as well? I’ve previously done very well at almost burning the house down, after falling asleep and leaving a boil-in the bag curry to boil dry, filling the kitchen full of smoke and welding the contents of the pan securely to the bottom of it.

Technorati Tags: blanket, burning, fire, firefox, sexist, sign

Ah, good old Asda. No sooner do they discontinue my favourite curry, they replace it with another, slightly milder curry variant. Ladies and Gentlemen, I bring to you…

Yes, their version of Rogan Josh! Now, they’ve done Lamb Rogan Josh for some time, probably the same amount of time as they’ve been doing the rest of them, but it’s the first time I’ve noticed this chicken one. Er, presumably because it has “New!” emblazoned on the front of it.

So, what does it look like?

OK, the combination of flourescent lighting and not bothering to set up the camera on my phone means that you can’t actually see how red this curry is. It’s a bit like chicken Tikka, but without… er, some of the Tikka-y bits. I did notice that the cooking times have gone up by 30 seconds. Don’t know why this is, as they’re the same size as the others in the range, with the exception, of course, of the larger, more expensive ones… if you see what I mean. For this very reason, I think the rice suffered a little. Despite my trick of adding an extra amount of water to the rice, it still emerged rather crispy and dry.

Anyway, for those who were waiting to see the cooked article will be a little disappointed. These are the only two pictures I took. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. And anyone who considers curry a pudding is more of an addict than me. I forced the whole lot down my gullet faster than a greyhound down a rabbit hole. The whole session was completed with a hearty and satisfying burp, and a great big swig of orange juice, straight from the works fridge.

I expected it to be hotter, as the different brands of Rogan Josh I’ve had in the past do tend to be a little spicy, but this one wasn’t. As mentioned before, a little like Tikka, but without as much of the creaminess. If I had to give it a critiscism, it’s that it was a little plain.

Overall: 7/10 - If this food were an item of clothing, it would be my pair of luminous yellow boxer shorts. It has the power to shock on rare occasions, and has a load of meat inside.

Technorati Tags: asda, curry, food review, grub, rice, rogan josh, tasty

Thank god for that. It’ll almost be over for another year. I get more and more sick of it each year. This year, for whatever reason, has seen an infinite rise in the amount of annoying little brats sat outside the various sets of shops, asking for “Penny for the guy”. Call me a whinger, but they get right up my sodding nose.

It’s not as if they even bother putting any type of effort into the guy anymore. It wouldn’t be too bad if they actually had a good guy which looks like it’s deserving my shiny pennies, but a carrier bag with a (bad) smiley face drawn on it, two-stripe trackies, and an old school shirt does NOT make a good guy. And it will not be receiving any type of monetary value from me. I enjoy saying one of two things. The first is “Got no change”, as I walk away, jangling the vast amount of coins in my pocket. So vast, in fact, that I appear to lean to one side on occasion. The second is to stop, look at the guy, then look at them, then back at the guy, and ask “Which one’s the guy?”

By the time they’ve worked out you just took the piss out of them, you’re halfway up the road, munching your Doritos.

Roll on November 6th.

Technorati Tags: bonfire night, fireworks, guy fawkes

Ok, I admit it. I’ve been playing Twilight Zone Pinball far too much. Apparently, I’ve played 111 games, with a total of 7 hours, 10 mins playtime. And that’s just since September 18th. I can’t be arsed looking up my high score, but it’s something in the 1,450,000 mark.

It’s all change in Mercuryvapour Towers. Daddykins has bought himself a new bed. The old one was over 14 years old.

Yesterday, we ended up here…

I had good fun lifting the old one down the stairs. The highlight was destroying the headboard. Couldn’t be arsed unscrewing it, so “riiiiip, snap!”. The whole lot ended up in the alley…

The new one’s now delivered, and considering it’s almost 3:20 AM, he’s sleeping on it. But it’s not the only amusing incident to happen.

At 01:30 hours the morning, I called my mobile up from the house phone, to locate it. As you all know, I have a new phone with a new number, and would you believe it, I dialled the wrong number. Bugger! Never mind, I dialled the correct number and grabbed the phone.

Later that day, whichever day it was, I received a phone call, on the house phone, from whoever it was who I misdialled. Imagine his words spoken with a “Sauf Efricen” accent.

Phone: “Brrrrring-brrrring! Brrrrring-brrrring! Brrrr”
Me: “Hello?”
Him: “Ya, hello who is this?”
Me: “It’s Jamie”
Him: “Jamie??”
Me: “Yeeeessss…. er, who are you trying to get hold of?”
Him: “I received a missed call from this number at about 1:30″
Me: (finally remembering) “Ahhhhh. Yeah, sorry about that. I got the wrong number.”
Him: “Ahhhh, ok”
Me: “Ok then. B-”
Him: “So, whereabouts in Scotland are you?”
Me: “Err. Scotland? I’m not *in* Scotland!”
Him: “Oh. So where’s your area code from? 0-4-2-something”
Me: “Hartlepool”
Him: “Hattailpool?”
Me: “No. Hart-Lee-Poooool”
Him: “Ahh. Did you once work at [some unknown factory]”
Me: “No.”
Him: “Oh, Okay then. Bye.”
Phone: “Click….beep-beep-beep, low battery warning, because whever it was on the other end of the phone sucked all of the energy out of the room”

Now, what amused me, was the following. Coatesy came round a couple of days later. Driving a car.

Either way, I wasn’t aware he’d changed his mobile number for the 5th time, and he wasn’t aware I’d changed mine for the first time in four years. Therefore, I still had his old number, he still had mine. Either way, I gave him my new phone number. Or so I thought.

I didn’t have my phone on me. Or a pen. I’d ran out of the house to see his new car. Therefore, I gave him my mobile. Now, during our conversation, he was interrupted by his mobile, and some goings on at “the bar”. Whether he took my number down wrong, or whether I gave him it wrong, I’ll never know. Either way, I emailed him, and indeed, the number was wrong…. The email reply was:-

“You gave me wrong number. had a good text convo with the lad whos number it was lol.”

How very odd. Did I accidentally give exactly the same wrong number to Coatesy, i.e. the same person who was obviously starved of attention enough to attempt a conversation a complete stranger? I’ll probably never know…

Oh, and I’m probably the last person in Hartlepool to comment on this, but Brett’s Stweet Shop has closed down. I’m devastated. They did proper toffee apples. OK, so I’ve not had a toffee apple since my mother was alive, and I’ve not actually bought anything from the store since I was in college around 1997/1998, but that store was an institution.

Less importantly, I’ve just found out the Brus Arms has also closed down. I never actually went in there, so no loss. There’s also an indian over the road from it. It’s within walking distance from here. It may have my business!

Either way, that concludes the interesting stuff. I’ll now fill you in on random stuff. Firstly, Scribcam.co.uk went down today thanks to a catastrophic hardware failure. I got some *serious* clicking noises and error messages coming from it this morning. It eventually crashed, so it was rebooted, and even after reboot, the failures continued to the point of receiving my first ever “serious” message on the drive. Eventually, the system gave up, meaning I had to power the machine off before it would reboot. A quick check in /var/log/messages showed a number of IDE resets, and some sectors actually failed to be read.

The following screen is a photo of the monitor…

OK. You can’t really read what’s on there. It doesn’t make much sense to many people. I found out it’s all down to the power supply in there. It’s eight years old, bless its little cotton socks. The connectors are becoming a little fragile. When I rebooted the machine, it failed to detect the problem hard drive. A power failure surely. I wiggled the wires about a bit, and voila. Machine is back up, no failure. I know that it’s well past its best. It’s time I put a backup plan in there… scrap the idea of an actual machine doing firewall duties, and get a dedicated piece of kit which will route traffic. A router, then.

I understand less about routers and networks than anything else to do with computers. My toes curl when it comes to network queries. Either way, I suppose I’ll have to bite the bullet and learn. I need a router that will handle at least 5 machines, without all the fuckery of DHCP. I memorize IP numbers. That’s the way I work.

OK, I’ll drag myself out of the sad part of the posting, and continue with other news. Firstly, I’ve updated other parts of the site! Honest, I have. The “About Me” site has been filled with all types of new information. There’s also a new “Music” page, which I’ll fill with my favourite songs and albums. That’ll take time to complete.

I also went to Blossom Garden last night. The best chinese in the town got even better! Imagine the scene. I order a special curry for Daddykins, and a chicken curry for myself. And, a portion of chips for both of us to share. The poor love behind the counter is brilliant. She can’t speak a proper word of English, and she’s been running the place since 1974. I really think she’s brilliant.

My only criticism with their curries is that they tend to put peas in. I’m not a pea fan, though I’ll eat them if they’re in there. Imagine my surprise and delight when out of nowhere, and for no reason, she said “No peas?” It was if she read my mind! “No thanks” I answered. I was thinking she may have got my request of “a portion of chips” mixed up with “no peas please”. So, I was expecting two curies with rice, but no side order of chips. I needn’t have worried My curry arrived perfectly. So did my dad’s. And so did the chips. It was by far the best curry I’ve had for years, and the chips were better than I could have possibly imagined.

Technorati Tags: bed, blossom garden, chicken curry, coatesy, Food, Music, new bed, new mobile, pinball, scribcam, sofa shop

I’ve just upgraded my flickr to the Pro account. This means I can upload 2 gigs (2 GIGS?) worth of ptohos per month.

You can view it here. This will be added to the sidebar at some point in the near future. I plan to upload a load more pictures than what I’ve made available in the current locally hosted gallery. This is, naturally, down to the space and bandwidth limit. I’ll be moving a couple of the large-imaged galleries away from here, and placing them on flickr, should I need to.

I’ll be keeping the Steetley Gallery local, that won’t be going anywhere, along with the music gallery.

Technorati Tags: flickr, new, Photos, steetley