Service with a smile? Actually I was laughing with hysteria. Ok it’s the weekend but should it *really* be so hard to get some response from the car lease company, or the manufacturers support site?

Apparently yes. I rang around the people I needed to call… and got no help at all. I’ll try again on Monday… maybe something sensible will develop… who knows.

In the meantime we hired a Tarago again at a cost of $640 for the week. Plus a $3,000 excess if we have an accident… and a $250 bond on top! Geez Louise… how much worse can it get :(

Don’t mention the jinx…. !!!!

So Johnny Depp rides again in PoC III and the burning question is if the hype is matched by the flicker? Well we went to see it this arvo and I can categorically say… yes… and no.

One of the problems they had was matching the sheer exuberance of the first movie. Their other problem was that the success of the first film was totally unexpected so there was no well hatched plot in the wings for the follow up. This was one reason the second film was such a turkey despite Johnny Depp’s repeated tour de force as Cap’n Jack Sparrow.

On the other hand, the crappy ending of PoC II meant those of us who loved PoC I *had* to go and see if the concept could be resurrected. :)

So what can I say about it. Well the computer graphics were amazing… but now becoming *so* brilliant they’re in danger of becoming passe! The acting… as good as ever, though the inclusion of Keith Richards as Jack’s father (?) was ‘interesting’. The storyline? Well… to say the least it was convoluted and weird with the addition of strange… and to say the least it was *very* hard to follow.

Overall I have to say I liked it… sorta… and can’t say it was a waste of money to see it. It wasn’t anywhere near as funny as ‘Black Pearl’ which was really sad. It had a few good lines… but nowhere near as many as it needed. Also, there was far too much graphic and unnecessary violence in all sorts of unnecessary places. Would I pay to see it again? Not in the cinema no… but I suppose I’ll buy the DVD when it is released just to be able to follow some of the dialogue I missed this time around.

Would I recommend it? To be honest… unless you are already a fan… not really.

I zoom here… I zoom there… I seem to zoom everywhere. Until tonight.

After driving around like a maniac since 2:30 p.m. taking kids to skating and Guides and then picking up new desks… and then the wife… and then dinner… I got home around 9:15 p.m. As usual, I reversed up the drive… more essential tonight because of the four desks.

The car gets part way up the drive… and the gearbox falls out… more or less. Basically when it’s in gear it makes the sort of rumbling noise you certainly do *not* want to hear coming from under your car.

After some muttering and mumbling we cart the desks up the drive and into the house then the wife pushes the car (with me steering the thing) across the road and we park it for the night.

Right. Easy peasy… we call ‘support’… yes?

No. To begin with we have next to no idea who to call. The car is owned by used but via ‘Leaseplan’ who are responsible for the mechanics. Except it’s less than three years old so it’s maintained by the manufacturer. So I start ringing around.

Leaseplan have a number… I ring… and discover I’m ‘out of hours’ so they transfer me to the ‘after hours’ guy… who i out. I leave my number and time of call. I re-read the bumf we got with the car… and ring Chrysler. What do we do I ask the guy who answers.

He says he hasn’t a clue. All he would do is tow it to a holding yard until someone came to fix it… or not. Does he know what we have to do? Nope… and isn’t much interested after I tell him we are at home. Seems we can only call him if we’re over 100 K from home.

Of course… it *had* to be the weekend didn’t it? And we *have* to be at the skating rink at 7:00 a.m. don’t we? And it *is* the old man’s birthday this weekend so we’d organised a ‘big day out’… let alone the fact this is the last weekend they’ll be here this time so we wanted to something ‘memorable’.

Anyone want to tell me this isn’t “The Jinx” at work???

Will keep you update on developments.

Just created a sub-domain on my reseller account and installed WordPress there. Nothing to look at really but if you fancy a look it’s here.

It’s only there for comment, news etc. on slang… to complement the other site really… but who knows what might come of it!

Now… where’s that advert template gone… ??

Just for a change it’s not particularly warm right now. This might have something to do with it almost being winter… and possibly something to do with being out walking the wife to the bus at 6:00 a.m. but either way 4ºC is too damn cold for me!

This week I started wearing a ski jacket when we go out. This morning I put a track suit jacket on under it as well.

Of course… I’m still wearing shorts…. :)

I went off to my ‘main domain’ to upload a photo album… after certain people spent a year nagging me for photos of the kids etc… only to find that somehow I’d ‘mislaid’ three sub-domains and the entire directory that contained them.

Have sent in a ‘support ticket’ asking if they can restore any and/or all of it, and am awaiting some sort of sarcastic response… after all it is a bit of a stupid sort of thing to do… and it’s not like I can blame anyone else for doing it either… I think?

Went to the pharmacy to collect my new medication this morning. Turns out to be something called Modafinil which I’d never heard of before it was prescribed.

However, according to Wikipedia (see link above) it seems it is a multi-purpose drug being used to combat daytime sleepiness without producing a ‘high’… but is also being prescribed as a specific for ADD!! So… maybe the doctor has found me a magic bullet to solve some of my more exotic conditions.

Time will tell of course, it’s only been 10 mins since I took the first one and I was all bar asleep before I swallowed it. Even though based on prior experience, I still think testosterone is a more acceptable form of treatment, I’m more than willing to give this a fair crack of the whip.

I hope it works… I’d really like my life back… I’ll post updates as the days progress.

Like me, I’m sure a lot of you wander around the web and come across all sorts of odd stuff. I’m looking for a specific type of software and because it’s a real niche area it’s not something that’s easy to find even by searching via Google et al.

What I want is software that will allow me to create online dictionaries… maybe a database program… or something that can handle searchable indexed lists… or something similar. Obviously it has to be ‘uploadable’ so that I can publish whatever I create on the web so that others can read it.

Preferably it would be free though I’d be more than happy to pay a nominal sum to have something worthwhile. After all, as I said, this *is* a niche product.

Currently I’m using a program called Glossword (http://glossword.info), but as good as it is, and free as it is, there are all sorts of shortcomings one being it’s sheer size and complexity! Also, and the author (Dmitry Shilnakov) seems to have abandoned development of it for over two years. There’s another one that looks good, a list compilation program by TshwaneLex (http://tshwanedje.com/tshwanelex/overview.html) but it costs in excess of 1500 euros so is way out of reach.

So… this is what I’m looking for. Please keep it a the back of your minds and if you should pass something on your meanderings… please let me know.

Over the past few days I’ve been quietly working away on the ODPS adding in the words we received during the past year or so. I started with 200 or so and have got 119 left. Oddly most seem to have been submitted to the ‘Seedy songs and Rotten Rhymes‘ section with only a few going into the slang dictionary itself.

Not sure what this means… if anything… but it’s something to write about :)

Still have loads to do of course, but I bought a book to help me along. I know nothing about CSS an have forgotten most of my HTML so I figure I’d give myself a short course on both over the next week and actually do what I’ve been threatening to do for weeks… and rewrite the smaller sites.

By the way – if any of you have any idea where I can get a better program than Glossword, yet still suitable for storing the collections in… let me know. Up to now I’ve found nothing better!

Last year we wrote about a little girl who was given methadone instead of cough medicine and subsequently died. At that time we not only spoke about her by name, but published a photo of her. Today a story (here) is being run in the local rag and her name is being suppressed for legal reasons.

Not being one to flout the law… mostly… we’re going along with it on the assumption this applies to all forms of media, but it raised a few questions about the point of it all.

Why was it alright to use the girls name a year ago… but not now? It makes little difference to anyone who knows the family after all… and this *is* a murder trial!

Just to add insult to injury her mothers de facto was falsely accused of murdering her and he was awarded $85,000 in compensation. There is something seriously wrong with the justice system when people can display at least some culpability in someones death yet be awarded compensation for insult when accused of it.

In this house the police found 3 litres of methadone… at the very least this guy knew it was there.

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