» Shops and Supermarkets

Poundland is doomed!
There's a shop unit in Derby's Westfield Centre that must be cursed.

Way back, when it was still the Eagle Centre, it was C&A, until they buggered off back across the channel.

Then it became Woolies, and we all know what happened there.

Then came TJ Hughes, and they closed down.

Now it's a branch of the purveyor of the finest quality tat you can buy for a pound. Oh dear.
(Fri 11th May 2012, 0:08, More)

» Shops and Supermarkets

Processed cheese and joined-up thinking.
I used to work at McDonald's, but my story concerns being the other side of the counter, at one of the other branches of that fine comestible emporium in my fair city.

At the time, there was a promotion on - 2 cheeseburgers for the princely sum of 99p. Now, I'm fond of hamburgers, but not so much cheeseburgers, so I asked the comely serving wench if I could have two hamburgers for 99p. 'Sorry, the promotion's only on cheeseburgers,' came the reply.

'In that case, I'll have 2 cheeseburgers without cheese, please.'

Serving wench toddled off to the production bin, where the chap who controls the burger flippers stands.

'Can I have two cheeseburgers without cheese, please?'

'You mean 2 hamburgers?'
(Thu 10th May 2012, 23:57, More)

» My First Experience of the Internet

Filthy porn early 90's style.
Way back in 1990, I was a first year Computer Science student. Some friendly second years showed me and a few of my friends how to download files from some FTP site in the US via a JANET gateway. Some of those were .GL files (sort of like a very very basic Flash video file). We thought it a jolly wheeze to leave such a file, depicting a young wench riding a St George on some well endowed fellow, running on all the 286 mono-VGA machines in one of the labs. After that came newsgroups, and gopher, and downloading UUEencoded Usenet archives from gopher, stitching them together by hand in a text editor, before decoding them and turning into jpegs so I could get more grot on a 720k floppy. I think that's where my degree went.

A couple of years after I graduated, when I was still working at McDonalds, ESCOM had a fantastic deal on 14.4k modems (£50!). I only has a Switch card then, and one of the few ISPs that accepted Switch cards had a chat function. The first evening online, a woman came through. We spoke on the phone once, and online a few times, but she wouldn't send me a picture, claiming that I'd not want to speak to her again if she did. I went through all the (for want of a better word) defects I could think of (really a man, disabled, fat, ugly, etc.) but it was none of those. I often wonder what was wrong with her...
(Mon 26th Mar 2012, 0:02, More)

» Hoarding

Everything that I own...
Since I split up with the soon-to-be-ex MrsMnG, I've been living with Mum and Dad. It was a fairly amicable, if one-sided, split, so I came away with my clothes, my books, CDs and DVDs, and my dying laptop. Oh, and a chest of drawers for my clothes. And a plastic crate full of tangled computer/AV leads. How can you be geeky without a plastic crate of tangled, possibly obsolescent leads?

These went in the attic, while I sorted myself out with some shelves and stuff. They're still there, apart from the DVDs. Beer, diesel for the Magnet*, Travelodge rooms for visiting the new MsMnG and presents for the little MissMnGs all seem to take priority over flat-pack cuboids, for some reason.

* My Ford Fusion**, so called because the last 3 letters are FNE.
** The car for the man with nothing to compensate for. Um.

Length? Too many people know about length, in my opinion...
(Tue 8th May 2012, 22:20, More)

» False Economies

Cheesy drums
A wheel bearing went on my Ford Fusion (called, when I remember, the Magnet as the last 3 letters are FNE. It's funny on some part of space-time, I'm sure). These are pressed into the rear brake drums, so I went on eBay and found some kind soul selling drums with the bearings already pressed in, with brake shoes for a damn good price, or so it seemed...

Come the next MoT, I needed to adjust the handbrake cable. Jack up the rear, pop it on axle stands, try to take the wheelnuts off. Ah. The studs are turning in the drum, presumably because the drums are seemingly made of cheese. Result? New drums and new fecking wheel bearings, and a bill for £400! Bah!

Why did I not just get bearings pressed in by a friendly garage? To do that would have needed me to take the heavy drums off, and then manhandle them to the aforesaid friendly garage by public transport, and I figured the drums might need replacing soon, anyhow.

Length? Brake drums are round...
(Tue 24th Jun 2014, 21:32, More)