Money

After the introduction of the new look coinage it occurred to me that they may all fit together to form one pattern. It appears that they do (the pound coin has the complete shield of the Royal Arms on). Being a little sad, I collected the coins together and thought I would commemorate the occasion for you all to see. I now know that loads of people have taken pictures of this and that I should have just googled it to save myself the bother! Humbug.

Apparently the designer was a guy called Matthew Dent. England is represented by the 3 lions, Scotland by the rampant lion and Ireland by the Harp. If you are really interested, check out the fuller article at The Royal Mint.

You don't know what you've got until it's gone

It's taken 3 weeks, countless emails, an outside contractor and a new hard drive to get my computer back into working order!

Before it broke I took it for granted, but after 3 weeks of stress – hopping on other people's computers and generally begging and borrowing time on other systems – my own Mac is back! It works, and I can do my job without having to jump through hoops. I love my mac; sad but true.

Life is like that. We take for granted the things that are most important to us and it's only when they are threatened or removed that we begin to appreciate just what we have/had. Today's thought: take time to be thankful for what we have.

A good day.

Somedays it seems that no matter how hard you try, nothing seems to get accomplished and everything goes wrong. Yesterday was not like that; it was a good day. Let me share some of the small things that led to this being a good day...

1. I actaully managed to unblock the sink drain – and it really was a 5 minute job. Last time I tried this I ended up taking the u-bend apart and couldn't get it back together again for days. That was a disaster and I had to call in my father-in-law. But with the aid of a suction pump that was in the shed when we bought the house it cleared, without too much hassle – in fact in a sad kind of way I actually enjoyed it.
   
2. Remember that CD player I inherited from work that ended up not working? Well I googled 'how to mend a CD player the skips and jumps' and after a little trawling, came back with some ideas. Apparently, the laser that enables CD players to read from CDs can dim with age. Once you have taken the back off and disconnected it from the mains, you can locate a little screw next to the laser. A few tweaks of this will increase/decrease the voltage and brighten/dim the laser. And the wonderful thing was... it worked! And to think I was going to chuck it! But the CD player is fully operational. Very pleased and slightly smug.
   
3. The 'Transformers: Revenge of the fallen' DVD arrived today, a few days earlier than expected. I know this is a small and insignificant point, but you have to bear in mind I missed this at the cinema and have been waiting months to see it. It was too long and they forgot to include a plot. However, there was lots of good action and Optimus Prime wins!
   
4. We had the other half of yesterday's take-away curry to eat. Alway a good thing; I love curry.
   

So all in all a good day... you know, where you feel like things are going your way :)

How annoying.

Ok, a little frustrated. Due to various reasons my company wanted to get rid of a rather nice CD player, which I was only to happy to re-home for them. I bagged it, carried it to the train station, sat with it propped awkwardly on my lap and finally, after an arm-aching walk got it home. I set it up for a quick test and guess what – it's really really good – with one major drawback. It jumps. No, not up and down – that would be impressive. But it skips and jumps when you get a few tracks into the CD. All the CD player has to do in life is play CDs; that is it's only purpose in life and it can't manage it. I almost feel sorry for it. Anyway, I did what all self-respecting blokes do in these situations. I took the back off, prodded and poked it a bit before replacing the cover.

Much to my astonishment the thing was working! Hurrah! Success! Alas, no. I had not replaced the cover back properly and somehow after removing and correctly replacing the cover the beastly machine had started to jump again.

Next stage – google how to mend jumping CD players without using a hammer and a lot of brute force.

In the beginning.

Well here we are, it's 5.46 on a dreary Tuesday afternoon and I want to go home. I'm just trying this blogging business out for the first time, nothing of much interest to say, but it will get better.

And that's it. My first blog. Wahey.