Head Lice The Truth

This story was told to me by one of the Mums at my kids school. I have no reason to think it's not all true.
	Said Mum has a son, who doesn't like having his hair cut. But one Saturday she dragged the lad into a hair salon, plonked him down and the hairdresser set about her work. She parted his hair, and lo, there were head lice everywhere. Off they went to the local chemist, the Mum mortified, even though, as I understand it, there's no actual need to feel ashamed about this common occurrence.
Anyway, she nervously approached the assistant, and in a low voice said "excuse me, but you have anything for head lice?" The girl turned and started rummaging under the counter. After some time she stood, turned and shouted across the shop to a colleague, with a Polish accident: "I'm sorry, but I cannot find any prescription here for a Mrs Headlice, where should I be looking?" Apparently the rest of the people in the shop cracked up on hearing this, and the deeply embarrassed Mum was soon laughing along with the rest of them. Classic.

Cumbrian Shootings

You know how the new government are going to have to save money from now on, to pay off our national debt?
	Well... here's a suggestion for you, and I don't want to sound heartless, really I don't, but how about not wasting millions investigating the recent shootings in Cumbria? I heard yesterday there were a hundred detectives on the case. What the hell are they all doing? I mean they haven't got to capture anyone have they... no case to prove, no trial. What's the bloody point?
Surely what actually happened is in fact easy enough to explain. I expect a lot of us will have had a PC that worked absolutely fine for years, switched on in a morning, did the job, and gave nary a hint of a problem. Then one sunny day it switches on but is all over the place, won't do anything right, acts like a mad thing. The same must be true for this taxi driver... something inside him snapped, and off he went on his rampage. All extremely unfortunate, but will it really do anybody any good to analyse this all to death and then come to the inevitable conclusion that he just went of his rocker? Let's save a few bob on the national debt and just move on.

Hewlett Packard - Very, very disappointing, but goodbye.

I know it’s a bit dull, but I’m going to have to have a bit of a rant about HP and their apparent very poor attitude to customers.
	I’ve always been a bit of an HP fan, actually, I've owned and own three or four HP printers, a couple of scanners and several Compaq PCs. Everything was going pretty well, until the moment when I decided to drag myself kicking and screaming into the world of Windows 7. Then it all went Pete Tong, and, unusually, it seems that Microsoft are not really to blame… no, the buck stops with Hewlett Packard, and they have been found lamentably wanting.
My nicest, newest printer is a Deskjet 5940. “Cleverly” Windows 7 detected the printer with no drivers to download, so it just worked. Marvellous. Well, marvellous until the printer decided to print badly. No problem, I thought, clean the heads. Now then… how do you do that? In the good old XP days I’d go to some HP centre thingy and click to clean and/or align the heads… now there’s nowhere to go. Off to HPs site… yes, the printer works under W7, but no, we’ve not been arsed to allow you to do maintenance, like head cleaning. What? And that leaves me where, exactly? And then there’s my HP Scanjet 5300C scanner. Sorry… but we can’t be arsed to write W7 drivers for it, why not throw it away and buy a new one from us? Do you really think I would? And then there’s my sister in law’s all-in-one HP printer/scanner, an Officejet D145. She unknowingly bought (from Amazon, shame on you) an out of date ink cartridge for it. The printer just wouldn’t use it… until I removed the battery in the printer to reset the date, then it worked fine. The cartridge is a box full of ink. If it works, it works. Why does the printer refuse to use it because of a date? So they can sell more ink? I think maybe yes. Added to which, though it will work occasionally, the scanner of this great lump of a thing has started giving an error message. That error stops the printer working. There's nothing wrong with the bloody printer. But because of the scanner problem (which may be caused by another whim of HP's to sell us new kit) the whole thing is now a piece of useless junk. I find it hard to imagine the meeting at HP where they came up with all this blatant built-in-obsolescence bullshit, but did they really think that if they take this attitude we'd run out and buy more HP kit? Frankly, after the last few weeks I may NEVER buy anything from HP again. I'm not saying Epson and the like are better, but I'm damn well going to buy from them in future until I get to find out whether they are or not... Bye bye HP.

Ford Focus vs Vauxhall Astra - Revisited

Slightly over a year has passed since my previous article on this topic, so time for an update. (see HERE - and now HERE too)

Just to set the scene, I'm comparing a 5 year old Astra with a similar spec 1 year old Focus. However, I've driven both from new, so I think my thoughts are pretty relevant in a head to head contest as I'm sure the Astra hasn't changed much in the intervening period.

The Astra has now reached 92,000 miles, and the Focus is catching up, currently at 23,000 miles. In the last year neither has broken down, both have maintained their fuel consumption figures remarkably consistently, at about 53 mpg. In fact neither car has suffered any form of mechanical or electrical malfunction recently, a testament to how well they build these things these days.

I've just re-read my previous article, and to be honest, not much to say here in fact. Initial impressions turned out to be about right for the Focus. A year on, and many miles under its belt, it remains the same. The comparative lack of 'go' has not gone away as the engine loosened up, and frequently I get caught out trying to accelerate from low revs, as would be easy in the Astra, and the Focus just bogs down. However, on the other side of the coin, the engine is a lot quieter than the Astra, which seems to be getting noisier by the day, now very 'clacky'. Which is normal, says my local Vauxhall dealer. Hmmm.

Despite the sporty feel of the Focus, the ride remains harsh and noisy. It is more fun to drive on a blast down windy roads, it is not so much fun on a dull motorway slog, the quiet engine is fine, but the tyre roar is worse by far.

The Focus continues to niggle me with small things. For example, the Astra's electric windows still work for a minute or so after you've switched it off. So, if you forget to raise one of the windows, you still can. The Focus, no, you'll have to rummage for your keys and switch it back on. The Focus Radio/CD player does not pick up the time from the radio, and the clock runs slow. Every time you set the time right, the date goes wrong. It drives you nuts. The Astra does it for you. Small things I know...

So, not really a lot to choose, but on the whole we now regret choosing the Focus as a replacement for the Astra last year. We did it (well, okay, I did it... I'll take the blame) just to avoid being boring. But in fact a replacement Astra would have been better, we feel. Not that the Focus is bad, but it's disappointingly not as good as other road tests seem to imply.

The next version of the Astra is due out soon I think, and to me looks really nice. If my lucky old partner gets a chance to choose her next company car in three years time, I can quite imagine a new Astra will be returning to our driveway. Question is, in three years time, would I relinquish my Astra and buy the (by then) old Focus? I'm guessing not.

William Shatner - Up Till Now

This was an impulse purchase, based on a brief but funny interview given by William Shatner to Jonathan Ross a few months back. I had not really been aware of what Shatner was like as a real bloke... just as a starship captain. And the answer was... very funny!

The book is chronologically organised, but it also jumps around quite a lot. I guess, as we know how his story turns out, there was little point keeping up a tension on the will-he won't-he make-it-big? part of his early acting career. It seems to be just a splurge of his thoughts and memories, and he frequently gets side-tracked. This works well, as he usually comes up with a funny anecdote on each diversion. And his anecdotes are pretty unusual... he's certainly had an exciting time over the years.

But the most surprising thing about his story is just how little a part Star Trek took. In effect he did all that Captain Kirk stuff, Star Trek turned out to be only mildly successful and he moved on to other projects.

It was only later that the Trek phenomenon really kicked in. The list of other acting roles he's done goes on and on. Basically, he seems rarely to have said "No" to any offer. And only recently has his contribution to the acting world been recognised.

I found myself laughing out loud at many of his tales, I just hope they really did happen! If they are, it's a miracle he's still alive.

Recommended, 8/10, you could buy the paperback version here.