Gary Lynch's Blog @ www.garyLynch.net

Gary's Moblog

2008-08-12T18:00:00.002+01:00

Now I have my fancy new iPhone I've set up a moblog for mobile blogging on the go. I'm not sure how successful it'll be as I've found most of the places I visit tend to be a bit remote and don't have decent 3G coverage but I can give it a go can't I.

www.garylynch.net/moblog

Virus Alert!

2008-06-19T19:25:00.003+01:00

I was reading this article The 25 Best High-Tech Pranks and it reminded me of a practical joke that was played on one of my colleagues (henceforth known as the poor victim) some years ago. Remember I work in IT as does the poor victim of this practical joke which makes it all the more hilarious that he fell for it, you'd expect anyone with the smallest amount of IT knowledge to realise exactly what was going on.

I had been on holiday and on the morning of my return I was sat at my desk doing the usual catching up with emails etc when one of my colleagues (the poor victim) approached my boss (the department manager) to ask if it was OK to get some quotes from our suppliers for anti-virus software. My ears pricked up at this wondering what he was on about as the company was well covered with AV software and so there shouldn�t have been any additional requirements. He continued to explain to my boss (who must have also been away the previous week) that we needed to get AV software to install on the companies laser printers as we had had a virus outbreak on them the previous week. I really couldn�t believe what I was hearing from him and I guess from the glazed-over dumb look he got from my boss neither could he. The poor victim continued to explain how when he was stood at the printer waiting for reports to come off he noticed the LCD panel was flashing messages such as �S.O.S.�, �...---...�, �Help, Virus Alert!� and the like. At this point I couldn�t keep a straight face and as much as I wanted to stay and listen to his story I just had to leave the room to burst into tears of laughter in the corridor. I was soon followed by a couple of other work mates who were also in hysterics and filled me in on what had happened.

We use HP LaserJet printers for all our reports and forms and as well as supporting the usual commands for printing text and graphics you can also send to the printer commands to alter various printer settings normally accessed through the on board control panel. Some of these commands allow you to display a message on the printer�s LCD panel. Every time the poor victim went up to the printer to collect a report another colleague would send an SOS message to the printer for the poor victim to see.

Well, the poor victim took it all a bit too seriously and really believed the printer was infected with a virus and made it his personal crusade to rid the company of the infection. He fished out the printer�s manual and read it cover to cover looking for anything that might enlighten him as to what was happening and after finding nothing there and with the printer still seemingly being infected even after a number of power cycles he did the only thing that was left for him to do and telephoned the manufacturers technical support line. This was some years ago before the Internet existed in its present form so he couldn�t just Google it for a solution.

Well from what I gather the tech support guy must have thought he had a lunatic on the other end of the line and did ask him �Do you have a practical joker in the office?� To which the poor victim replied �No, he�s on holiday!� I think the tech support started to play along as clearly there was no getting through to this man and so they continued to humour him by asking such things as �What�s the temperature in the office?� To which the poor victim responded by getting a thermometer and measuring the temperature. Eventually I think the tech support guy must have suggested to the poor victim that we should infest in some AV software for the printers just to get home off the phone.

Of course by then the poor victim was in his stride determined to get to the bottom of this and decided to check every printer throughout the company and as you can imagine he was greeted by similar virus alert messages on each one he checked. I can't remember if he ever did try to buy the software but I'm pretty sure he never discovered it was all just a prank.

Photos: Portugal, June 2008

2008-06-15T08:23:00.001+01:00

The Joy of SEx

2008-06-13T17:26:00.006+01:00

SEx = Sat-nav Experiences/Expeditions/anything else you can think of beginning Ex� (lame I know but got your attention didn�t it)

Tomtom (the sat-nav software not the little drums) is great, it makes navigating in a strange area dead simple, especially a foreign country where the signs aren't always immediately obvious. Probably too simple really as we become to rely on it just a little too much and follow Jane's relaxed soothing instructions without a second thought.

We've been in Portugal and decided one day to drag ourselves away from the chore that is sitting by the pool slowly getting intoxicated (in fact as I write this I am still in Portugal sat by the pool slowly getting intoxicated so if it all becomes nonsense please forgive me) and instead do a little bit of sight seeing in some local villages. Not knowing the area that well I put all the locations on our itinerary into tomtom before setting off.

Our first stop was a little church on the edge of town that is supposed to have the most amazing interior and so we decided to check it out as it was on the way to our main destination. (There doesn't appear to be a lot else to look at around here other than old churches and castles etc. - maybe I just need a different guide book.) As it was just down the road on the edge of town I didn't feel the need to get my tomtom out. It�s very easy to find, you drive the mile or so to the edge of town and there it is on your left, unmissible, just take the exit and ta-da. I took the exit and suddenly found myself heading back in the opposite direction on the town bypass and a few minutes later driving past the house where we�d set out from. We did a U-turn at the next junction, drove past the house again and got off at the exit where it all went wrong. Only to find that there didn't appear to be anyway of crossing the bypass to reach the church that was on the opposite side of the road. I was about to admit defeat and pulled off the main road so I could get my tomtom out when I instead decided to follow a small unsigned non-descript lane which did eventually meander its way down and under the bypass before coming back up near to the church. The sense of victory was all mine.

The interior of the church was indeed worth seeing I only wish I could have photographed it but there were signs everywhere warning you against using cameras (probably so they can sell you a postcard for 50 cents, which I did buy so I guess it works for them) having paid �2 to get in a think that�s a bit mean, but there you are. I couldn�t even secretly knock a couple of shots off as the ticket lady was very school mistress like and after taking our money pointed to some pews where I think she wanted us to sit (surely she knew weren�t in there to pray, heaven forbid) and then stood in the doorway watching our every move.

When we left I decided it was time for tomtom to do its magic and guide us to our next stop. I wasn�t going through the previous fiasco where the less than 2 mile journey ended up closer to 7 miles. We got 50 yards down the road and tomtom asked us to turn left but unfortunately it was a right turn only so we found ourselves back on the bypass again travelling in the wrong direction. Never mind, one thing that�s great about tomtom is that if you go the wrong way it�ll just correct your route and off you go. Half a mile down the road Janes soothing voice calls out �Right turn ahead� Right turn in 100 yards� Right turn.� Now had I been driving a Chieftain tank or even had we been on foot then the right turn would have been fine (except that it would have only taken us back to the left turn that we couldn�t take) but as we were travelling in a Renault Clio that I expected wouldn�t have been to happy about mounting the 2 foot high concrete barrier between us and some scrub land that led down to a small country lane off to the right I decided that Jane was full of shit and chose to ignore her. She clearly wasn�t happy by the sound of her constant instructions to do a U-turn (though the annoyance never shows in her voice, not like when Emma�s navigating! But that�s another story.) I knew roughly where we wanted to go, there was a motorway a mile or two north which we needed to be on to get back in the opposite direction. As fortune would have it there was a brand new dual-carriageway a little further along which I took to get us back on track, again much to Jane�s annoyance as she seemed to think we were ploughing across some open field or other.

Eventually we arrived at the village we were heading for and drove straight past the site we came to see. Now this wasn�t exactly tomtom�s fault as when setting the route I saw a POI (point of interest) on the map which I just assumed was ours but turned out not to be. Not wanting to think we�d missed out on something I was eager to see exactly what it was that tomtom want to show us so like sheep we followed Jane�s instructions to a T. We soon arrived in what was clearly the �old� part of town built many centuries ago before the invention of the motor car and when she asked us to take a sharp left into what looked like nothing more than a cobbled pavement I was beginning to have my doubts about her sanity but when a scooter shot across our path and down the �road� I assumed it must be navigable to motor vehicles and so did the tricky manoeuvre necessary and followed the scooter. I was feeing kind of relieved that we were only driving a Clio as anything wider would have meant returning the car to Karen and Peter in a state that most garages would usually describe as �written off�. After a few very frightening minutes of squeezing down the narrowest of lanes and around the tightest of corners I spotted a car park and decided it was time to cut our losses park up and do the rest of the journey on foot. Well we eventually found our way to tomtom�s POI on foot only to find it was shut for renovation.

By now we were gasping for a drink (but had to make do with Coke) so stopped in a caf� in the town square opposite yet another picturesque church (maybe that really is all there is to see in Portugal?) to refresh. Whilst there I dug out the guide book to show Emma what it as we really came to see only to read that they�d just shut for lunch and wouldn�t open again for another hour and a half. Bugger. We cut our losses and decided to head home to make the most of the remaining pool side intoxication time.

We told tomtom to �Navigate to Home� and off we set. This time she did us proud, managed to avoid the narrow lanes/walkways and get us out of town and back onto the motorway. We were a couple of miles down the motorway when Jane said �Exit ahead�, hmmm I don�t think so I thought, when we came we got onto the motorway a few miles further down, but I followed her lead nevertheless. (as a side issue, �nevertheless� is one of my favourite words � told you I was getting intoxicated didn�t I.) I was once again beginning to doubt tomtom�s wisdom when the road suddenly became recognisable and I knew if we followed it we would eventually get to a left turning that would take us back down to the house. That�s when Jane surprised me again with a �Left turn in 100 yards�. By now you�d think I�d say �fuck off Jane I know the way from here thank you very much� but of course I didn�t and instead followed her commands like a perv in a gimp suit at an S&M dungeon.

The �road� we followed carved its way through the countryside before we saw it was taking us back towards the motorway. Bloody hell I thought if tomtom has taken us off the motorway only to take us back on at the next junction (wouldn�t have been the first time) I was not going to be happy. Jane said �At the roundabout take the second exit straight on.� That�s when the paved road suddenly turned into a dirt track that dropped down underneath the motorway and the �roundabout� that Jane talked about was nothing more than the scrubland surrounding the pylons holding up the motorway. As I wasn�t driving that Chieftain tank I went the wrong way around the roundabout only to be greeted with our �exit� which turned out to be a dirt track up the side of a hill with about a 2:1 incline that I think even the Chieftain would have struggled with never mind our little Clio. Had I been driving a Landy with some V8 grunt, a long run up an a tail wind I may have considered giving it a go but I didn�t think the third-party only car insurance we had on the Clio was enough to warrant an attempt. I turned around and went back another way. After we arrived home I examined the map and that dirt track was actually a very good short cut it�s just unfortunate that tomtom is unable to tell the difference between �dirt track� and �main road� at least in Portugal anyway, perhaps in Portugal there isn�t really a proper distinction?

Road kill has its season just like anything else

2008-05-27T18:53:00.002+01:00

I�ve been neglecting this blog for a while (I wonder how many blog posts start with that remark � and then follow it with this!) so lets kick start things off again.

We got the campervan on the road again this bank holiday weekend, it was only its second outing this year and its second within as many weeks. Last weekends outing, being its first this season, was a bit of a test to check all was running OK and to see what areas might need a bit of attention before having its MOT last week. I fully expected the van to fail the MOT and so thought I�d get all the little niggles fixed at the same time it was in for any work to get it through the test. However much to my surprise and delight the van passed! So off we set this weekend confident that we had a good road worthy vehicle.

We headed off to Pembrey on Saturday - for those that don�t know, Pembrey Country Park is adjacent to Cefn Sidn sands our favourite beach and probably the best parakarting beach in the whole of the UK � with high hopes for the weekend, the weather was good (for Saturday at least), the tides were right and the wind was strong. When we were there last weekend there was no wind at all which was a disappointment.

When we arrived the weather was great and we headed straight to the beach to make the most of the good conditions. There were already a lot of parakarters on the beach as it was a CLSC Meet weekend and as I approached the flying zone I had a look out for what others were flying as it�s always a good indication of what the wind conditions are like and what kite to unpack first. Someone was flying a Flexifoil Viper which I guessed to be 3-4 metres (I later realised it was only a 2m) and so thought our old 4m Sky Tiger (the predecessor to the Viper) might be a good choice as it�s a good solid dependable kite and doesn�t give you to many surprises especially in the gusty wind we were experiencing.

So off I set down the beach and I hadn�t gone far when I was beginning to regret the choice, there were some very strong gusts that made it very difficult for me to keep hold of the handles and kept pulling the buggy sideways and almost tipping it. I was also picking up quite a bit more speed than I was comfortable with and after a kilometre or so I thought oh shit, I am not going to be able to turn this buggy at this speed so I slowly took the kite out of the power zone and when I�d slowed to a crawl I dropped the kite back into the power and turned to spin the buggy when a particular vicious gust of wind decide now would be a good time to teach me a lesson and I was ripped sideways out of the buggy and dumped onto the hard sand, the buggy flipped and landed on my legs before I was dragged unceremoniously down the beach whilst I struggled to bring the kite under control. It really was a struggle as well, I think the brake lines may be too long.

Anyway, I dusted myself down, got back into the buggy and gingerly made my way back up the beach. I was slowly coming to a stop at base camp when the wind died causing the kite to collapse and tie itself in a knot which then became a whirligig of a propeller once the wind picked up again and spun franticly out of control. I was again, rather embarrassingly, pulled out of my buggy and dragged across the beach right in front of everyone. The spinning kite was generating so much power that I just couldn�t hold on and as a last resort I just had to let go of one of the handles. I don�t think I�ve ever had to resort to that before as it really is a last resort resulting in one hell of a twisted knotted mess.

Again I gathered myself and the kite and tried for a while to untangle the mess when Emma joined me to help sort things out. We came to the conclusion that it would be impossible to sort out in the high winds on the beach and decided to pack it away and try later back at the campsite. It was then that we heard a shout from behind and turned to see an unmanned kite making its way rapidly down the beach towards the sea with just its handles dragging along the sand. Being the closest to the kite and also trying to recoup some street cred I set off at speed to try and catch it and after what must have been the fastest 100m sprint I�ve ever done and close to death (I�m not as fit as I should be) I was about to give up the chase when the kite slowed down and with an extra spurt of energy I managed to catch it just before it reached the water. I was left holding the kite for ages before anyone, including the kite�s owner bothered to come and help out and even then I didn�t get a proper thank you from the owner. Miserable sods the lot of them.

We didn�t stay on the beach much longer after that as the wind got even choppier and gustier which wasn�t very conducive to having a good time. We made our way back to the campsite and had a pleasant evening untangling lines, barbecuing and drinking.

Over night the weather broke and it pissed down with rain all night long and the following morning it looked like it was probably set in for the rest of the weekend so we decided to cut our losses and head for home. We set off and I managed to persuade Emma that we didn�t need to stop to do some shopping, so making good progress I thought I�d manage to get home in time for the start of the Monaco Grand Prix.

We were heading down the motorway when I remarked to Emma at the extraordinary number of broken down cars there appeared to be along the route. It�s a phenomenon you see every bank holiday weekend, whilst roads are busier than usual they are probably no busier than any normal weekday rush hour. The difference being the cars on the road during a normal rush hour do that journey day-in day-out whereas on a bank holiday you have a lot of vehicles on the road that are overloaded and have probably travelled a lot further than they normally do. I was discussing this with Emma hoping I wasn�t tempting fate (not that I believe in any superstitious mumbo jumbo) when the van started making a funny noise which at first sounded like a rough road surface but it then soon became apparent that it was in fact a blow out when it got scarily loud and the van started to lurch around. I steered the van onto the hard shoulder and got out to be greeted with a tyre that was in shreds with most of it littered all over the carriageway.

We fortunately stopped near an emergency phone and so I called for the RAC who came out fairly quickly and changed the tyre for us. I wasn�t happy doing it myself on the busy motorway and my jack probably wouldn�t have been strong enough to lift the fully loaded van anyway.

So all in all not the most successful of weekends.

Alcoholometer

2008-05-23T17:28:00.000+01:00

My goal for 2008 is to have more days without than days with alcohol. It's going to be tough because it's almost guaranteed that I'll have a drink every Friday, Saturday and Sunday which means I therefore can only have a drink on one other day of the week every other week just to achieve 50%. Actually, the more I think about it, the more I think it's unachievable! $wet) ? ($width/$dry) : ($width/$wet)); ?>

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[ Update ]

Bloggy 'ell

2008-05-01T19:50:00.003+01:00

My boss in work approached me the other day and mentioned it had been brought to his attention that a blog existed the contents of which could be defamatory and bring the company into disrepute. Having written one or two work related anecdotes in this blog, my first thought was 'oh bloody hell, which in-duh-vidual have I pissed off this time!' But no, as it transpired the supposed content of the said blog was nothing at all to do with anything I've ever written about. So breathing a sigh of relief I eagerly set about trying to track down this other blog. I must admit a little bit of disappointment that after using all my search know how and voodoo I was unable to track down anything anywhere on the Internet. I did however uncover this little gem, though who they are talking about and even if it is our company (there's more than one with the same name) I can't be sure.

�Will there be free beer again?� I asked.
�Yeah.�
�You�re not gonna stand outside the barriers smoking all the time, are you?� Jim asked.
�Maybe. That cunt from CompanyX won�t be there, will he?�
�Which cunt?�
�That cunt that was there last time. I fucking hated him.� He pestered me while I was smoking. Thought he was brilliant. I loathe people like him and made no attempt to conceal it when he made small talk with me in July.
�Ah, yeah � no, he won�t be there.�
�Good. Let�s go.�

Anyway, this did get me thinking about whether there are any possible ramifications to anything I've ever written about in this blog as there have been a couple of posts where I've been a little bit critical of people I have the greatest of pleasure working with.

Is anything I've ever written defamatory? I don't think so as no real names have ever been mentioned, it's probably only the people I've written about that could identify themselves. And besides, by definition if it's true it's not defamatory!

Could anything I've ever written bring the company into disrepute? Again I don't think so as I never mention who it is I work for and any details that identify them get changed. OK, so some work colleagues may read this and they'll know who I work for but I don't think that matters as it's only stuff that I'd openly speak about to anybody in work who could be bothered to listen to my ramblings.

I've just done my research and am a little happier now I know that in almost every case where a person has been dismissed for supposedly bringing their employer into disrepute for blogging that almost all of them have won their unfair dismissal cases, and these were people who were very open and critical about who they worked for. So I should be safe with my little occasional rant.

By the way, did I mention I work for the most wonderful company in the world and I only wish I could mention who they are so I could recommend you all go out and buy the excellent products right away!

Bright Lights

2008-04-11T13:00:00.001+01:00

We've had new lights installed in our office as the others were to dim; now it's like being in a solarium! Our only recourse to prevent blinding headaches and allow us to see our screens is to sit underneath umbrellas.

How to make the perfect Chili, Redux

2008-01-21T20:26:00.001Z

This is an update to my original post on How to make the perfect Chili. That recipe has been the basis for my chili for many years now but I'm always playing around with it looking for new ways to improve it and I have now settled on a slight variation to the original which I think is more perfect.

Here it is - to serve 3-4.

What you'll need:

1 packet of Old El Paso Chili seasoning (this isn't cheating, it's a damn good mix)
1 large red onion
500g lean minced beef (fresh not frozen, this is very important)
200ml of Jack Daniels
1 tin of chopped tomatoes
1 tin of black eyed beans or pinto beans, drained. (Don't ever use kidney beans)
1/3 jar of Peppadew peppers

What you do:

Finely chop the onion and gently fry for few minutes in a couple of tablespoons of mild olive oil
Mix in the chili seasoning and fry off a bit to release the flavours.
Pour in the Jack Daniels - being careful not to flamb� it - and let it reduce until you have a nice syrupy consistency. This will be quite quick as the alcohol evaporates and your house will stink of liquor!
Crumble the minced beef into the frying pan being careful to retain nice chunky meat morsels (which is why you cannot use frozen mince) gently fold it in and let it brown on one side before gently turning to brown on the other (do not stir, it breaks up the chunks!)
Make sure the meat is well coated with the syrup and allow to simmer for five minutes
Poor over the chopped tomatoes, beans and Peppadew peppers, gently fold in and allow to simmer for another 15 minutes

Server in a bowl with garlic bread and a good bottle of wine, Wolf Blass Yellow Label cab sav works well.

Photos: The Wedding Present

2007-12-18T18:54:00.000Z

A couple of weeks ago The Wedding Present played in Cardiff as part of their George Best 20th Anniversary Tour. I was so, so excited about this having wanting to see them live for years and I must say they did not disappoint as you can tell by our huge grins in the last photo below.

We fortunately bumped into Surj, a ~~work colleague~~ friend of Emma's, as it was he who took these photos and advised us to hang around as Gedge would probably be around afterwards.

The gig itself was brilliant; they opened with a mix of more recent tracks, old favourites and some Cinerama stuff before rather bizarrely a man in a rabbit costume came on stage to countdown to the George Best part of the set. I really didn't understand the rabbit but in hindsight it might be an obscure reference to the opening track "Everyone thinks he looks daft"?

Alarming Times

2007-11-22T16:50:00.000Z

Our alarm goes off at 6AM in the morning and the usual procedure is I�ll get up make Emma and I a cup of coffee and bring it back up to bed. Well this morning the alarm sounded and I woke up feeling quite pleased that I�d slept straight through as I�ve been waking really early since coming back from India and not been able to get back to sleep. So I got up, went down stairs to make the coffees and brought them back up to bed.

I sat there sipping my coffee when Emma asks �what time is it?� Six O�clock I reply. �Are you sure?� she says. This gets me thinking oh no have we overslept but I look around and it doesn�t appear any lighter outside than it should do so confused I look at the clock and it�s just turned midnight, I�d only been in bed 45 minutes!

Photos: Goa, India, November 2007

2007-11-20T22:59:00.000Z

We spent two weeks in Goa, India staying at the Nanu Beach Resort (photos 6, 8) in South Goa. The hotel was On Betalbatim Beach (photos 10-18) situated in the middle of nowhere. This was both good and bad � it was great not being in the middle of a developed resort, we had piece and tranquillity and for most of the time the whole beach to ourselves. On the downside you couldn�t just wander outside of the hotel to go to another restaurant etc.

The hotel itself was nothing special, it was showing its age and in need of a bit of an update. The air-con for instance was definitely no longer very affective and very noisy. The air temperature was very warm even at night it was just too hot to sleep without having the air-con on. There was one night when we had to switch off the air-con as it was so noisy only to discover that it was actually the air-con in the room below us that was keeping us awake! It was so loud that our room was vibrating! I eventually got up in the middle of the night and went to the hotel reception and asked them to sort it out. After a while when they�d done nothing about it I went back to reception and told them I wasn�t going to leave until something was done and if they couldn�t do anything then they�d have to give us a new room! Needless to say they did something about it then.

There was one good restaurant, Martins Corner, a short taxi drive from the hotel which we went to a couple of times. The food there was great and very cheap, you could get a meal for two that in an Indian restaurant in the UK would set you back about �30-40 for about �7!

The food in our hotel wasn�t anything special. The majority of it was vegetarian (90% of Indians appear to eat veg only, probably because of the cost) with one or two token meat dishes. The meat dishes would often be an attempt at a western dish and were best avoided but when they did do Indian meat dishes they were no better. Here in the UK we are used to very good Indian food (chicken tikka marsala is after all the biggest selling dish in the UK) but in India the quality of the meat available cannot compete. One night I had their lamb rogan josh (well mutton not lamb so goat really) which looked really appetising but on eating it you soon discovered the meat was still on the bone making it fiddly to consume and the sauce itself contained many small bone fragments. You soon learned to eat the veg only dishes, which were actually very good and very tasty. However living on vegetable curries for two weeks has had a rather unpleasant affect on my bowels!

One day on the beach one of the local hawkers approached me and as his English wasn't great he handed me a card to read. It turns out he was supposedly medical trained in cleaning the middle ear! I had to read the card twice just to make sure I'd read it correctly and before I knew what was going on he had his tools in my ear scraping away. Of course I couldn't move in case I got injured and so let him get on with it. He was showing me all the wax that was being removed which quite surprised me. When he went on to clean my other ear I let him get on with it thinking he's doing a great job. He starts babbling on about something and then hands me another card to read which says he has found stones in my ear and it costs 250 rupees to remove each! I can feel his tools scraping against a stone and so ask him to yes please remove them. He removed two stones and then demanded the 500 rupees (about �6.50), I manage to haggle him down a bit to 400 rupees but after handing it to him he shows that I'd only given him 300. I am sure he used some slight of hand to make one of the 100 notes disappear but I couldn't prove anything. Anyway, I was feeling quite pleased that my ears were now nice and clean. Later that day whilst walking down the beach someone else wanted to clean my ears and although I told him I'd just had it done he too got his tools into my ear before I could do anything about it. This guy scrapped around and pulled out a huge blob of wax which most definitely did not come out of my ear! I knew then that it was all just a con and the wax and stones they inserted themselves through some slight of hand, not difficult seen as you cannot see what they are doing. I met many more of these 'ear doctors' and told each one of them to get lost in an ever more aggressive manner.

If you ever go to Goa and want to do a bit of site seeing then don�t book any organised trips by your tour operator. Every hotel has a number of �resident� taxis outside which are very cheap and very enterprising. We booked our first taxi driver to take us to Anjuna Flea Market (photos 21, 22) it was a good hours drive from our hotel and on the way back the driver up-sold us a detour to Old Goa (photos 23-35). Old Goa is the old 16th century capitol city and has a number of church�s and cathedrals as a tourist attraction.

All the taxi drivers are on commission from local stores and they�ll always want to do a bit of a detour to various shops on the return journey to your hotel. You don�t have to buy anything but humour them, one of our taxi drivers showed us what he got for delivering tourists to a shop � 12 visits got him a spare tyre for his taxi! One taxi driver took us to a tailors, we didn�t want to go but Emma agreed without realising it and before we knew what was happening we were ushered inside. The tailors will make anything you want made-to-measure for very cheap prices. They bring out the Next Directory, you select what you want and then the fabric you want and a couple of days later it�s ready. We did a trip to Ponda (photos 46-69) to see some of the spectacular Hindu temples and booked it through the taxi driver that took us to Anjuna and Old Goa just because he was a nice chap.

The only trip we didn�t do with a taxi driver, but we could have, was the trip we took to Hampi. As it needed a couple of nights in a hotel at Hampi there was some comfort in knowing everything was pre-booked. Hampi was an 8-hour train journey away (photos 70-80) so there was a whole days travelling to get there and another whole days travelling to get back with just one days site seeing in between. One day probably isn�t enough to do Hampi justice (photos 83-159) but it was well worth it anyway. The train journey alone is an adventure in itself � there was one point when I was listening to my iPod dozing off a bit when I opened my eyes only to see a mouse sat on my backpack cleaning his whiskers!

Photos: West Belfast

2007-11-01T13:00:00.001Z

I am sat writing this in Belfast City airport on my mobile phone with a pint of Smithwicks Ale and a sausage roll in front of me. I have another hour before my flight and have to waste it somehow! As someone recently commented to me "that's true �ber connectivity!"

I'm in Belfast installing network equipment at our NI office and as things went like clockwork yesterday afternoon I had a couple of hours to kill before getting to the airport today. So I thought I'd do the touristy thing again, last time I had enough spare time to go to Giants Causeway, this time with only 2 or 3 hours I had to do something in the city and so decided to have a look around West Belfast in the infamous Falls Road and Shankhill Road area.

This district and others across Belfast are probably like no other place in the UK. The history of the area needs no explanation to anyone, along the Falls Road you have a heartland of the Irish Republican movement and running parallel to it is the Shankhill a heartland for the Unionists. And dividing the two is the so called 'peace line' a monstrosity of concrete and steel that keeps the two communities apart. At the couple of places where roads pass through the wall there are large gates which still today sometimes get shut during periods of heightened tension. Today the wall is nothing more than a tourist attraction with a steady stream of taxis and tour buses bringing people to write there cheesy messages of peace on it.

Personally I think it should be ripped down as it's such an eyesore and symbol of segregation but apparently it gets half a million visitors a year and so someone somewhere is probably counting the money from all those people and thinking it'll cost so much to remove when it's generating so much income. I think that is really sad, whilst it is poignant reminder of recent history and something that will move even the hardest of men it is still a monstrosity, imagine having to live in one of the houses opposite it. And anyway there's loads more to keep the tourists occupied.

There's also all the murals which are on the sides of buildings around almost every corner. There's never any question as to which part of the city you're in, nationalist or loyalist as the murals make it quite clear.

Something I found quite amusing but really only goes to highlight the obsessiveness of the residents was the way in which on the Shankhill side where you had street name plaques on the sides of buildings they had placed additional plaques underneath saying 'Ulster', what's the point really?

I took a few photos with the crap camera in my mobile phone, so the quality isn't that good:

Some people shouldn't be allowed computers

2007-10-23T19:27:00.001+01:00

Someone rang me in work today, the conversation went like this:

Idiot: I'm trying to find the Health and Safety pages on the company Intranet but can't see them, can you help me?

Me: Of course, just click the 'Health & Safety' link on the left-hand navigation bar on the Intranet home page.

Idiot: I can't see the Health & Safety link all I can see is the Business Post home page.

Me: That's not the Intranet, that's the Business Post web site. Go to the Intranet and you'll see the link.

Idiot: How do I find the Intranet?

Me: Do you have an icon for it on your desktop?

Idiot: I have a big blue e is that the one?

Me: Yes it should be.

Idiot: That opens the Business Post website.

Me: Right, then your default home page has been changed. Type http colon slash slash server zero one slash intranet in your browsers address bar.

Idiot: What's a colon?

Me: It's the two dots on top of each other.

Idiot: Oh yes, are those forward slashes are back slashes?

Me: Forward slashes of course.

Idiot: What's next?

Me: server zero one slash intranet.

Idiot: is that a forward slash or back slash.

Me: forward slash.

Idiot: What's after the slash?

Me: intranet

Idiot: It says the page cannot be displayed.

Me: Are you sure you typed it correctly?

Idiot: Yes.

Me: Can you read out to me what you typed?

Idiot: http colon forward slash forward slash server o one forward slash intranet.

Me: Is that an o one or zero one?

Idiot: zero one.

Me: Are you sure it's all spelt correctly?

Idiot: Yes.

Me: Are you sure you used forward slashes instead of back slashes?

Idiot: Yes.

Me: Did you use the slash key on the left hand side or right hand side of the keyboard?

Idiot: The left hand one.

Me: That's a back slash not a forward slash, retype it using the other slash key.

Idiot: Oh, I thought those were forward slashes... What comes after the http?

Me: colon forward-slash forward-slash, that's the right-hand one, server zero one forward-slash intranet.

Idiot: What comes after the last slash?

Me: intranet

Idiot: It still says page cannot be displayed.

Me: Well something isn't typed correctly then.

Idiot: Oh, I'll just keep typing it in until it displays the page.

Me: Well that won't work if you're obviously not typing it correctly. Read out to me character by character exactly what you've typed.

Idiot: h t t p colon slash slash s e r v e r o one slash i n t e r n e t

Me: It's not 'internet' it's intranet i n t r a n e t.

Idiot: Oh it's working now.

Me: I am glad. [as I slam down the phone]

Jan commentated on another post that I'm more patient than I used to be, I think he might be right. I was losing it a bit towards the end and it was coming over in the tone of my voice but I didn't swear at her once! There was a time when I would have cut that converstion off about half way through and just emailed her a link.

The Triumph of Death

2007-10-19T00:00:00.000+01:00

We have hanging on the wall in our lounge a copy of The Triumph of Death by Pieter Bruegel the Elder painted in 1562. The painting is a panoramic landscape of death: the sky in the distance is blackened by smoke from burning cities and the sea is littered with shipwrecks. Armies of skeletons advance on the hapless living, who either flee in terror or try vainly to fight back. Skeletons kill people in a variety of ways - slitting throats, hanging, drowning, and even hunting with skeletal dogs. In the foreground, skeletons haul a wagon full of skulls, and ring the bell that signifies the death knell of the world. A fool plays the lute while a skeleton behind him plays along; a starving dog nibbles at the face of a child; a cross sits lonely and impotent in the center of the painting. People flee into a tunnel decorated with crosses whilst a skeleton on horseback slaughters people with a scythe. The painting clearly depicts people of different social backgrounds - from peasants and soldiers to nobles and even a king - being taken by death indiscriminately. (description copied from Wikipedia [click here].)

So why on earth do we have it hanging on our living room wall? I bought the picture almost 20 years ago whilst visiting the Museo del Prado, Madrid where the original hangs. I was completely captivated by the picture which really is something to behold and so bought a copy in the museum shop. I was a youngster in them days still living at home with my mother and I hung the picture on my bedroom wall in a very nice frame made by Mike. The picture stayed there for years before I left home and Em & I moved into our current house. The house was quite bare when we moved in and so we just stuck the picture on a convenient hook that was already in the wall with the full intention of changing it for something more appropriate as soon as. Over 12 years later it still hangs there!

It's funny and a bit embarrassing seeing peoples reaction when they see it there for the first time, they must think we are weirdos or something! Well anyway, I think it's a great picture and it matches our colour scheme perfectly!

Photos: Paragliding, October 2007

2007-10-11T22:09:00.000+01:00

Jan took me paragliding today, he was doing his tandem training and needed some cargo so I volunteered. I had this idea that it would be a great adventure filled day but Jan failed to warn me of the reality. We spent all day sat on the side of a cold, windy, wet hill first waiting for the dense fog to clear and then waiting for the high winds to drop. We did eventually get a flight in at about 4PM but Jan aggravated a knee injury and so we couldn't do any more after that. Anyway, it was well worth the long wait - it was ace!

Here's some pictures I took, not of Jan and I but of the others on the hillside. I've also added some photo's I took of Jan paragliding off Pen-Y-Fan some time ago.

Toilet Humour

2007-09-27T22:24:00.000+01:00

The other day I used the recently refurbished toilets in work, I don't use them that often as they're not a pleasant experience. They're too small, hot, humid and they usually smell - I don't think the ventilation in there must work properly or it's not adequate. Either way it's daft considering we're a ventilation company.

Well anyway, whilst I was in there I noticed something that I hadn't noticed up until now. One of the ceiling tiles has been replaced with a piece of clear perspex so you can see the ducted extract fan working above the suspended ceiling. There is also a spot light that can be switched on to illuminate the fan!

Clearly this has been designed as an exhibit to show visitors. It makes you wonder why? Who gets a tour of these facilities and when? Is there a procedure in place for checking nobody is using the toilets before inviting visitors in? And on checking what if they decide it's just a bit too pongy to show someone around - do they move on to the next toilets? As I mentioned above they are afterall working toilets and as such not that pleasant, they're very small with only enough space for one person outside of the two cramped cubicles. And God help them if they show someone around when it's curry day in the canteen!

I think the question you have to ask the most though is - who on earth had the idea to do this and why was everyone else involved to gutless to tell them how ridiculous an idea it was?

Bangkok Market

2007-09-26T14:28:00.000+01:00

Incredible!

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Photos: Giants Causeway, September 2007

2007-09-17T22:16:00.000+01:00

Last week I spent a couple of days in Northern Ireland with work and ended up having a day to waste so I took my hire car up to Giants Causeway. It's a designated World Heritage Site and I've always had a fascination with geology since studying it at school so I thought I should check it out. Whilst it was indeed interesting to see I must admit a bit of disappointment, it was lots smaller than I'd always expected. I managed to get a few photos before my unprepared camera ran out of power.

Un-bloody-believable

2007-09-06T18:18:00.000+01:00

Someone in work had the audacity to make a complaint against me as he was offended by an email that I'd sent. This is the email:

Can I make a suggestion that we stop using that bloody awful font on the I&M's that make the documents difficult to read. Of all documents our I&M's are the ones we should make as clear as possible.

I'm not sure if he was offended by my use of the word 'bloody' or my suggestion that we should change the font, I think he might have been instrumental in choosing the font.

Anyway, my Director had words with me and my defence was to quote from Wikipedia "Nowadays it is considered to be a very mild expletive, and unlikely to cause offence."

Indeed even if it is an expletive, it certainly isn't a profanity, it's more of an intensifier that has no meaning in itself but adds a weight of feeling to the statement. Had I said "that not very nice font" instead I don't think the message would have got across. As it is the font is now being changed.

I bet if my comments had been congratulatory and included a real profanity such as "That's a fucking great font, let's use it in all our literature" then no offence would have been taken, in fact quite the opposite.

Unfortunately this isn't the first time a complaint has been made against me for using the word 'bloody' in an email. Again at that time my defensive was that under the circumstances it was fully justified and more than appropriate. I was being really messed around by other people who couldn't get themselves organised and this was the email I shot off born out of frustration:

bloody hell, this'll be the fourth time I've had to burn this CD. Could you guys not be a little more coordinated with this?

Well, it caused uproar! One of the recipients suggested I should face disciplinary action and his Director said I was being rude and unhelpful and passed the complaint over to my Director. I was absolutely gob-smacked, it was all blown out of proportion. This was my reply:

Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to deal with this matter, however I don't believe you are in full possession of all the facts.

Yesterday zzz asked that I burn to CD some PowerPoint presentations for today's meeting, this I did immediately, interrupting what I was doing and losing my train of thought. Moments later I was asked to burn a second CD as the wrong files had been sent to me, again this I did immediately and zzz took the CD. This morning I was asked by yyy and xxx to add more files to the CD which meant having to write a third CD. www then wanted to add another file which meant creating a fourth CD! The completed CD was handed to www as soon as he came to see me and I suggested to him ways in which we could do things differently in future.

On each occasion I stopped what I was doing to burn these CD's immediately, rather than being unhelpful I think I was in fact being most helpful.

My emailed response and the 'sarcastic' way in which I may have spoken to www was born out of the exasperation and despair I felt after being messed around due to the complete lack of planning and communication by your people. I actually set high standards for myself and it often frustrates me when people (including myself) fail to live up to those expectations. This frustration can often be interpreted by others as rudeness. Whilst I agreed that certain turns of phrase aren't always appropriate in all circumstances, these words do exist in our vocabulary for a reason and I think in this situation it was most appropriate and fully justified.

I'm quite surprised by www's comments that I should face disciplinary action or a warning, I think this is probably more to do with injured pride than anything else. I'm especially surprised as I received witness reports that afterwards he said "If he ever speaks to me like that again then I'll push him through the wall." I think under our conditions of employment this threat of violence towards me counts as harassment and bullying which is a gross misconduct resulting in summary dismissal. I was going to forget about this and not bring it to your attention but should he persist with this then I will pursue the matter.

There's a lesson to be learnt here from both these situations. Never underestimate a persons ability to confuse injured pride with offence and to then defend themselves by attacking back.

Photos: Paul's Place, August 2007

2007-08-28T23:00:00.000+01:00

Some photos from a weekend at Paul's new house on the French Riviera.

ADSL Woes

2007-07-04T13:00:00.000+01:00

As of writing I have been without broadband at home for 43 days now through the incompetence of BT and my ISP (Demon). I have started to keep a record of the debacle in another blog: adslwoes.blogspot.com

Dr Gary and Mr Lynch

2007-06-20T20:20:00.000+01:00

I've come to the realisation that I have this little drink problem that brings out a Jekyll & Hyde sort of character in me. After about 4 pints reality seems to become suspended and I become this awful leche that says the most inappropriate things to the most inappropriate of girls - quite often good friends, work colleagues, brides on their wedding day etc. What's worse, Emma is often with me at the time - that's so disrespectful. There really is no hope for me.

Jan, Ste & Gary's Bogus Journey 1992/3

2007-06-06T20:29:00.000+01:00

In July 1992 after being completely disillusioned with work I quit my job and headed out to Canada with two friends, Jan & Ste, to embark on what was suppose to be the first leg of a World tour. As things turned out that World tour didn�t get much further than the North American continent and a year later I was back home doing the very same job that I�d quit. Today, some 14 years later, I am still stuck in the same bloody job!

I recently found in my loft the diary I�d kept whilst on that journey and reading through it made me laugh, so I�ve decided to reproduce it here for posterity. I expect most people will find this very boring and even banal as it�s not so much what I wrote that amused me so much as the memories it brought flooding back. It's certainly not in the same league as Che Guevara's The Motorcycle Diaries and much less anticipated than The Blair Diaries but it's probably a lot more honest than The Hitler Diaries.

To be honest I did a pretty poor job of keeping a diary as I couldn�t really be that arsed with it and so weeks would go by between entries - most of which were written whilst drunk after coming in from a night out or during the morning after whilst lying in bed nursing a hangover. Consequently a good deal of what I wrote was just about nights out getting pissed, who with and where. Looking back there is so much more interesting stuff that I should have written about but I was a lot younger then and my priorities were mostly all about just having a good time.

I�ve reproduced the journal exactly as it was written with only the odd spelling correction etc. I thought if I was to do this then there would be no point doing it unless it was complete and faithful. Being a diary it is also home to a lot of personal thoughts and feelings that get written down just to get them off your chest and to help sort things out in your own mind, so there were times when I wrote some quite unpleasant things about people who otherwise were and still are very good friends. I�m sure they won�t mind but if they do then tough shit they probably deserved it at the time anyway. There�s also a lot of very personal thoughts about my love life or lack of, it was all a long time ago now so I don�t really care. I�ll admit to leaving out one sentence but it�s not about anything you could possibly imagine. There is so much more in here that will embarrass me but leaving in this one rather innocuous sentence could destroy what little street cred I may have left at the end of it.

As the diary turned out to be mostly the hurried scribblings of a drunkard I have decided to annotate it to fill in the gaps, explain things in more detail or just to comment on how stupid I was in hindsight. The annotations are all in this font whilst the diary entries are quoted in Courier.

Jan has asked to add some comments about the trip � his additions are in this blue.

I really enjoyed reading this� there were a few minor points and additions that I wanted to add. Just a few little points that I think were worthy of a little more attention.

Warning! the rest of this article contains strong language and some themes of an adult nature. To continue reading, click here ...

Hotdoll - the sex toy for dogs!

2007-05-03T19:38:00.000+01:00

It's amazing the things you stumble upon on the web, this really made me laugh and I thought it should be shared. I wasn't sure if it was a joke at first, but no it is a genuine product.

According to the product designers description at http://www.feeladdicted.com:

A dog is an animal with an enormous sexual appetite which can't be controlled. Many methods consist of artificial ways to stop dogs inborn character. These methods like castration or meds are going against the natural laws. Hotdoll is a natural (and beneficial for dog's health) way to control its sexual impulses.

This love doll for dogs is shaped to be grabbed easily by the dog's paws like female hips. Hotdoll is designed in 2 sizes to be used by little dogs and by big ones! Its contrasted colours are made to be easily distinguished by dogs eyes. The body is made by a plastic structure covered with a 1 cm technogel skin to create a soft and molle touch.

All orange parts are made of rubber, that way the dog grips on the floor. The pink hole behind (most important part!) needs to be washed regularly for hygienic reasons. Once clean you can apply some female odour spray on it (the spray is an accessory) several times per month, when your dog seems sexually hungry or nervous.