Life in the Bus Lane

CDRFC isn’t the best alley to finish your skittling career on, but it’s what we were given. A miscalculation meant we actually needed 3 points from tonights match, not the 1 we had originally thought. We managed to lose the first leg on a tie which didn’t get us off to a good start, losing the second as well didn’t help, but then we managed to trade legs until the match was 3-3. We lost the 7th leg on another tie, and then lost the 8th properly. Fortunately we’d done enough to take the pins so Crazy Gang took 7 points, and we took 4 which should guarantee us second place in the league.

One of the sticker-ups learned a valuable lesson tonight. A tight low-cut vest top and hipster jeans are not really suitable clothing to wear when sticking up if you want to remain any modicum of decency. Especially if you’re wearing bright red underwear.

And now my skittling career is at an end. That’s all folks.

Tonight will be my last skittles match, Housing Admin are disbanding due to a lack of players and won’t be taking part next season.

I originally got drafted in for one match in September 1993 and have been playing ever since. In the 14 seasons I’ve played we’ll have won 6 cups, and come runner-up on several occasions. Not a bad showing really.

Following the overheating problems with my laptop I decided to get a cooler for it, the Zalman ZM-NC1000 looks like a good bet so I head off to Dabs to order one. The first order gets put on hold for a security check, apparently because my address details are wrong, despite having been the same since my account was created there several years ago. I cancel that order, change a few details on my account, mainly swapping phone numbers around, and order again. Straight away that order also gets put on hold for a security check. One snotty email later pointing out that we’ve reached something of an impasse, I cancelled that order as well and have ordered it from somewhere (hopefully) more sensible.

Having ordered a new PC last night, my laptop has decided to sulk. Periodically the picture breaks up and the screen flickers a lot then goes blank, usually this is when the CPU load is high. I think that the cause of the problem is the graphics card overheating, I might see if I can remove the heatsink at somepoint and refit it with some more thermal compound underneath. Obviously I won’t be buying the extra 1GB of memory for it whilst it’s being temperamental in case I have to replace it with something faster. If I do replace it, it definately won’t be with another Fujitsu Siemens.

After a day or so spent messing about with an old PC trying to get a servicable NAS box running, I’ve finally caved in and ordered a new PC. It’s a Dell machine from the factory outlet, sporting a 1.8GHz Core 2 Duo processor, 1GB RAM, 250GB SATA HD, DVD RW, and a 256MB Nvidia graphics card. I’ll add the 320GB SATA drive from the current PC, and probably buy another 2GB RAM to beef it up a bit.

Once that’s up and running I’ll use my current PC to replace my FreeBSD server, then use the FreeBSD server as the NAS box.

Tonight was the Pins Cup Final, aka the Hobbs Cup. We were drawn as the away team, and for the first 5 legs or so it was pretty even, however a minor slipup or two left us 11 pins down after 7 legs, mainly due to Treasurers having got two spares and us none. Fortunately Treasurers didn’t have a great last two legs leaving us needing 54 for our last leg to take the cup. Somehow we managed to get our highest leg of the match, a 59, to win by 5 pins, mainly thanks to one of our team getting our first and only spare of the night.

For some bizarre reason I was top score, a 15 spare might have had something to do with that though
As for the league, it turns out that the captain miscalculated, we still need one point from the last match, which is being played next Monday, to guarantee us second place in the league.

Special mention should probably be made of our captain Dave Weeks, who, as of yesterday, is now known as Granddad Weeks following the birth of William James Weeks. To be fair, Jon and Charlotte had a lot more to do with it than he did.

Google Earth and Google Maps finally have some decent satellite images of Bath. Thanks to Neil for spotting it before I did, even though he’s on the other side of the world.

Well that’s the only reason I can come up with as to why one DHL driver pulled out of a junction right in front of me as I rode to work this morning. I managed to slide to a stop about 3ft from the side of the truck, and I still don’t think he saw me. I’m not exactly small either.

We won the first leg quite covincingly, but lost the next two, however we then hit a run of good legs and went on to win 5-2, taking the full 8 points in the process. If our maths is right, that guarantees us second place in the league thanks to the team in first place beating the team now in third.

Tonight was also the end of an era, as it was our last ever home match at Widcombe Social Club. To be honest I won’t miss the place. It’s not a patch on what it used to be when I started playing in the early 90’s, I’m not sure they’ve even cleaned the alley in that time, and the beer is now almost as expensive as in a proper pub.

Our next match is the pins cup final on Wednesday at Bath City FC, let’s hope we can emulate their recent form and win the match.

I’ve spent most of this weekend up in Royal Victoria Park helping run the St George’s Day scout funday. Saturday was mostly spent putting up a huge marquee which took 15 of us over 5 hours to erect, I was slightly broken afterwards. Copious quantities of alcohol soon numbed the pain, but at 7:45 this morning I was back in the park again nursing a hangover, this time in my role of official event photographer. We had all sorts of weather during the day, overcast and cool in the morning, rain early afternoon, then hot and sunny for the rest of the day, I now have a nicely sunburned face.

As a result of todays work I have a sore back from lugging a heavy bag of camera kit around all day, and 500 or so photos to filter through, post-process, and send off to the ACC Communications for him to deal with as he sees fit.

A Worm’s Eye View of St George’s Day

Having seen a copy of the league table at the weekend, we need to score 20 points from three games to guarantee second place.

It all started fairly well tonight, we quickly worked our way into a 4-2 lead, but then it all went a bit wrong. We managed to lose the last three legs, and lost the game 5-4. RUH Porters took 8 points, we took 4.

This means we have to win the last two games to guarantee second place in the league, although it could be less depending on the outcome of the two Larks vs BARDS matches.

Tonights ride was pretty much the same as last nights, however this time I stopped off at the vet and got mugged for £31 for two small bottles of liquid part way round. It was meant to be the first work ride of the year, but both of the other riders pulled out today leaving me on my own.

In an attempt to stop the incessant seatpost slippage on the 456 I’ve fitted a massive DMR seatclamp I originally had on the Inbred, all being well that’ll give enough grip to sort things out. You can tell that the 456 was built cheaply, the Hope rear wheel didn’t fit until I used brute force which apparently isn’t uncommon, and the Thomson seatpost slips continually. Having said that, it rides very nicely.

Somewhat later than usual, I finally reached 400 miles for the year today. A fairly good ride somewhat spoiled by having the worlds noisiest rear brake. It was bone dry and dusty out there, and for some reason there were loads of squirrels out playing.

Same again tomorrow hopefully.

Actually that’s a bit of a lie as the shedbuilding is now finished, but Elvis Costello didn’t write his song in the right tense.

After a night of excessive beer and curry sponsored by GE, I eventually surfaced and spent the day helping Father build his new shed. Everything went together smoothly and it took about 6 hours in total, including several breaks for food and drink. Time for a shower and a well earned beer or three.

Cadbury Creme Eggs, 36p for four in Sainsburys.

I never got around to going out for a ride yesterday, so decided to make up for it tonight. I took the 456 out for a change, it feels very weird after riding the Unit for the last few rides. I did a route up through the Uni via the steps, and across the front of Sham Castle, then back down into town, all in glorious sunshine.

At least the 456 has slightly more sensible bars than the Unit.

For some insane reason, I woke up about 8am and decided to head out for an early ride. I was out of the door just after 9, did a quick trip via the University, and was back home by 10:30, a time when I’m still usually in bed asleep on a Sunday.

For some reason town was full of people on tandems wearing matching jerseys, there must be some sort of strange tandem festival taking place.

Finally I headed out for a proper road ride today. I met Ian in the usual place and we took a slightly different route down to Chew Valley Lake for tea and cake. After the stop Ian decided he wanted to take the short route back home, which unfortunately is the long route for me, so we split and I headed home by the usual route. The weather was almost perfect, just a tad cold for the first hour or so, but lovely and warm for the latter part.

In the end I did 37 miles, which is by far the longest ride of the year, and in fact over 10% of the years riding so far.

I might manage a quick ride tomorrow and Sunday, and I’m tempted to do another decentish road ride on Monday.

After much procrastinating and purchasing of a new mattress, I finally convinced myself to go out for a ride about 6pm. The wind had died down a bit by then, but despite the sunshine it wasn’t particularly warm. Even with two long-sleeved wool tops I was still a bit chilly. Despite that it was a pretty good ride, virtually bone dry out on the trails, and hardly anyone to get in my way apart from a gaggle of Brownies out for a walk.

I finally passed 300 miles for the year today, and 400 miles ridden on the Unit. Quite pathetic really.

Milton Keynes General Hospital are having a few problems with their new computer system.

"The software is so clunky, awkward and unaccommodating that we cannot foresee the software working adequately in a clinical context."

"In our opinion, the system should not be installed in any further hospitals. If it is not already too late, there is a strong argument for withdrawing the CRS system from this Hospital."

Medical staff hit out at "dangerous" computer system
79 Milton Keynes staff say Millennium "not fit for purpose"

Me - Earlier this evening:

"I’ll just pop down the pub for a quick pint to be sociable"

At work the heating gets turned off on the first of April whatever the weather. So a couple of weeks ago when it was quite warm, the radiators were going full-blast and we were roasting in the office with all the windows and doors open, and fans running.

Now that it’s got chilly again, the heating is off and I’m contemplating putting my coat back on to warm up a bit.

My funky temperature graphs tell me it’s dropped from just under 30C last week, to just over 20C this week, and that’s slightly inflated because the sensor is sat next to the coffee machine.

We won the first two legs comfortably but lost the third by quite a lot. The fourth and fifth were ours, but then we lost the sixth by a few pins. Luckily we showed a 57 on the seventh leg and the Porters couldn’t come close. Housing won 5-2 and took 8 points, the Porters took 2.

At the moment we are struggling to raise a team for the return match as we’re four players down on normal. We might end up dragging people off the streets at this rate.