Sleepless nights again...

Mobile blog again! mrs-MaFt ok but tired and in pain. mini-MaFt has a chest infection that the doctors don't seem to give a crap about! he can't breathe when he lays down which makes for great fun at night... surely they should give him an inhaler or nebuliser or something... poor little mite. ah well, see ya round. i'll have a lot of blog reading to do when i get back to work! MaFt

Mobile-Tastic!

I'm trying the email from a mobile blog entry today! sat in hospital waiting for mrs MaFt to get operated on. bored and hungry! currently writing christmas cards, how organised is that? it's not me who's organised though... not much else to say, let's hope i can remember the secret email to get this added to the blog. ooh, just looked out the window and it's snowing! the weather man was only 3 days late... see ya! MaFt

Ivy Saves The Day

I am going to hate Christmas when Mini-MaFt grows up! Sis-In-Law-H's daughter (Neice-S2 [Neice-S1 is Brother-T's daughter]) wanted a Barbie Pegasus Styling Horse Head Thing for Christmas, so Uncle-MaFt was called in to search t'internet to find one.

You'd think it'd be pretty easy. So did I - loads of shops sold them, but hardly any had them in stock... The best place to buy was from eBay where the average price ended up about £45 plus a fortune for postage, or Amazon who wanted £45 via a 3rd party seller. Argos had them for £19.99 and a fiver postage but none in stock for home delivery. So, I started checking stock levels at the local Argos stores. None. I spread myself further afield and found one in Keighley. So I reserved it and Mrs-MaFt, with the aid of Ivy the SatNav and some wonderful POI's she got to Keighley to pick the last one up from their store.

How much hassle? Far too much! When Mini-MaFt is bigger he can have a satsuma in a stocking and a Beano Annual. If he's lucky he can have a torch too.

MaFt

Illness

Yesterday I had a bout of squirty-bum. I was shivering and aching and it sucked big-time! Today I'm a bit better, but still have some squirty-bum. However, unlike last time I only took one imodium tablet and not three.

The League of Gent's was very good - the 2nd half was definately better than the 1st though. The first half was essentially a load of short sketches loosely tied together as being 'auditions' whereas the 2nd half was a simple piss-take of every pantomime ever written and/or performed. Highly recommended if there are any tickets left!

That's all for now.

MaFt

The Geeky Cats Are Behind You!

I've just bought a domain name for my geek site: garminpoi.co.uk using the money I got from Google Adsense. There's some change as well so I might get some sweets too and tell my dad it cost more than it really did. Do kids still do that these days?

We decided to keep the cats (for now). So Barnze: thanks for the offer, but I won't need your shotgun now.

Off to see The League Of Gentlemen Are Behind You tonight at George's Hall in Bradford. It should be good, apparently it's a pantomime. Well, knowing their characters I'm sure they won't be short of any dames. Why does most UK comedy revolve around blokes in dresses? Little Britain, Monty Python, The League of Gentlemen, Eddie Izzard...

Anyway, I have work to do, contrary to Brother-A's beliefs, I do actually do more than blogging here ;)

MaFt

Cats? Anyone?

We've come to the decision, and a bloody hard one too, that we're going to get rid of Kia and Tinkle. It's no good with Mini-MaFt cos they're not getting the attention they want (obviously Mini-MaFt takes up nearly all our time!) and they end up wrecking the couch and carpets etc etc. It'd be better for them in another house where they'll get attention. So, if you're around the Bradford area and want a couple of cats then drop me a line and we'll get it sorted.

I'll be sad to see them go, but times they are-a-changing.n

Here they are:

Kia	Tinkle

MaFt

PS - No sarcastic comments Barnze!

My Life Behind Bars

Thanks to User Bars and Rate My Pizza.

MaFt

Diet Coke

I stumbled across this: Ultra Ultra Rare Soda Can

It's an empty can of Diet Coke but it's still sealed. Wow... erm... great..?! I sent him an email asking about it:

"Hi, you say the can is fully submergible but the photo's clearly show it floating. Can you provide more infomation please? I really want to buy this piece of absolute tat."

I didn't use that last part...

His reply this morning was: "Sorry for the misunderstanding. What I mean't by submergible is that it can go under water and no water will be able to go in because the can is fully sealed. By using the word submergible, I was trying to emphasis the fact that it is sealed completely."

Now, my understanding of the word submergible is 'capable of being immersed in water or functioning while submerged'. By using the word submergible, the seller was trying to emphasise the fact that it is fully sealed - well, why not say it's fully sealed? If it was open it would still be submergible...

Needless to say, the seller is American!

MaFt

Fixed It!

Smart, I have my Device Manager back again now! Using a nifty tool called RegMon that shows everything happening in the registry. I opened up device manager and saw lots of entries in 'HKLM\SYSTEM\ControlSet\PCI' there were lots of clearly corrupt entries along the lines of $%&'()+,-./0123 repeated over and over and over. I just deleted these, and the ones in ControlSet001 and ControlSet003 and it'sback!

Fantastic! My PC is back to normal (ish).

MaFt

JUMP!

World Jump Day/

Don't forget now, they'll even send you an email reminder the day before ;)

MaFt

Photo's, Wedding, Movies, Broken Computers

My computer is being dumb - I have an empty Device Manager! It was dumber before but DTN recommended I try Registry Mechanic which fixed lots of the minor annoyances that had built up over time. In fact, it fixed 824 registry anomolies / errors! However, it didn't return my Device Manager. Not a major thing until I want to update som drivers - but I have a few more tricks up my sleeve from searching various forums.

Brother-A, who's getting married tomorrow (after the whole Mexico curfuffle they managed to get an emergency license usually given out to people with a terminal illness who want to make sure their finances are safe with a feisty young blond who 'really loves him for who he is, not for his money'...). Anyway, the point being that Brother-A asked me / I offered to make a DVD of photo's from the wedding and the service to show during the evening's partay. I seem to have been rather naive in thinking there'd be 10 or 20 photo's when in fact there are 251... I quick change of plan and I found that Google's Picasa will make photo's into a fancy, faded in and out etc, avi file that I can use to make a DVD. Best of all, it's free!

So, busy night tonight, busy day tomorrow (I also learnt last night that there's a rehearsal for the church christmas production [in which I've been asked to play an American country bumpkin called 'Uncle Yule'] in the morning...). I might get a rest on Sunday (doubt it though, Mrs-MaFt will have something planned!)

See ya

MaFt

Quiz Time

PC Driving Test

I got 30 out of 30 - I rule :)

Post a comment to let me know how rubbish you are and how good I am ;)

MaFt

Talk To The Car 'Cos The Hand Ain't Listening

I walked the 4.5 miles to work this morning. I couldn't blag a lift from my usual source cos he was starting earlier and I didn't want to pay £2 to get to work. So I walked. It took just over an hour which i didn't think was too bad!

On the way down I saw a new billboard poster for the new Ford Fiesta - my initial thought was that it looks like the old Vauxhall Corsa. Then I read a bit of the smaller print that said 'The New Voice-Controlled Fiesta'. Voice-controlled eh? Fantastic! I wonder how voice controlled it is. Is it just 'wipers on', 'wipers off', 'heater on' etc or have they gone the whole hog and got voice-controlled steering?

Imagine: 'turn left' and the car goes left; 'shit, the lights were red' and the car suddenly stops and reverses back a bit... All you'd need is sat-nav: 'in point one miles enter roundabout and take 3rd exit' - the car would do the rest and you'd get to sit back and relax.

The only problem I can see that there might be is in a car without sat-nav and husband and wife are arguing: 'turn left!', 'no! turn right!' and the car splits in two down the middle...

MaFt

Attack Of The Killer Ducks

At Ribby Hall (can't be bothered making a link, read yesterdays post!) our cottage was on the edge of a small lake / large pond. As you would expect, there were a lot of ducks around; fat ducks, i mean, really fat ducks. I don't think I saw any of them flying. I don't think any of them could.

They were a bit scary too. If you opened the door they assumed you would be feeding them (as if they needed it) and charged quackily towards the door. In fact, in order to get the fat quackers charging at you you merely had to flick the latch on the doors and they'd come running.

I filmed this happening, and if I get time to sort it out I'll post it on here in the next few days. For fat ducks, they can't half move quickly!

MaFt

Back Once Again (With The Renegade Masters, Beedum Bah-Hum Flibby Dib Tastic)

Does any one know the actual words of the song referenced in the title? Does anyone know which song I'm on about?!

Anyway, we've been away (again) on a Mini-MaFt free weekend at Ribby Hall. Right nice it was, but it was cold wet and windy for most of it - although we expected that anyway! Shame the fireworks on Blackpool Beach got cancelled cos of the wind. We're hoping to go again next summer and stay in one of the log cabins...

Not really been up to much else except for starting to move things up to the attic and doing a bit of singing/recording for another punk worship song. I'llpost a link whenI'm happy with the final mix!

That's all for now, got loads of washing to sort through - might even do some ironing as well.

MaFt

Carpet Fitters

Bloody carpet fitters are useless. In fact, any company to whom you pay money for them to come at an agreed time period are bloody useless. "We'll be there in the morning" - it's a big enough window - why not stick to it?!

Imagine the other way round:

Company: You promised to pay for the job when we'd finished.
MaFt: Yes.
C: Well, why haven't you paid?
M: I'll pay after you've finished it.
C: We've finished it, where's our money?
M: I'll pay when I'm ready to pay. I never said it would be as soon as you'd finished it.
C: But you promised!
M: I didn't, I just gave you a period when I should be able to pay. I'm not able to give you an exact time. It's not company policy...

It wouldn't wash, would it?!

MaFt