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April 2004
The Blog Archive
Grain Of Truth Publications presents:
Diary of an Ale-Fan
Philosophy from the bar, on life, the universe and everything. Ale-fuelled words of wisdom and benign bigotry - fun for all the family !
Defying convention, I produce my blog in ascending order. That’s the kind of crazy guy I am !
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April 2004
Saturday, 3rd April 2004
Rubbish
We like to think that we've been pretty good at recycling our rubbish in the
past. We make regular trips to the bottle & can banks. We compost as much as
we can (including some paper and cardboard), using our brown bin for the
rest. We put out newspapers & magazines for collection. We try, probably not
hard enough, to limit the impact we have on the environment.
This week we have become the proud owners of a blue wheelie bin. Our road
must be one of the last in Bury to get blue bins, curses, if they'd been
issued in order of enthusiasm we would have been some of the first to get
one !
The blue bin is for a whole list of recyclable materials.
The trouble is (even for the slightly green, like us) it requires a whole
new approach to throwing things away. We now need different bins in the
house for different things. It takes about five minutes to decide where to
discard something.
I'm sure that given time we will get used to what to put where, but for the
time being we have the, slightly dictatorial in nature, instructions from
the council stuck on the side of our fridge, telling us what we can and
can't do with our refuse.
One spin-off though from 'blue-bin-ness', it generates shed loads of conversation; Both between me and the lady
and, our friends and neighbours.
It would appear we are all suffering from 'now which bin do I put it in' syndrome.
Who said "Modern life is rubbish" ?
Sunday, 11th April 2004
Neglected
I'm afraid I've been neglecting my blogging again. A mixture of reasons. Lots to do and also not feeling to good.
Still no sign of commercial premises, sadly. Hope something comes up soon - I really have had enough of my job !
In the meantime I've been working on a website that will compliment other things that I hope to be doing. Lots of hours put in and I'm still not there yet.
I'll try and post again tomorrow. Must dash !
Monday, 12th April 2004
Bee Gees Parkinson Tossers
If you put 'bee gees parkinson tossers' into a the BBC search engine you my blog comes in at second place to this story from 2001 !.
Went for a wander around Bury today:
The things people leave lying about the streets !
Am I the only one that doesn't like the Scissor Sisters ?
Tuesday, 13th April 2004
The Dark Ages
Our Interweb connection has been down at work today. It’s a right bugger when you can’t get on it.
No e-mail, no surfing, no reading blogs in my lunch hour. How did we manage before we had e-mail ?
No e-mail means you have to talk to people – that’s very bad news as far as I’m concerned – in the working environment I really prefer not to talk to people unless I absolutely have to. One reason is invariably they’ll want to try and sell me something I don’t need – they don’t succeed but they don’t give up on trying. Another reason, is a character fault of mine, I don’t suffer fools gladly. There’s nothing worse than stupid people asking stupid questions.
Sunday, 18th April 2004
Ale Fan Wrestles With Mozilla And Loses
The website I've been working on is now ready-ish for public consumption. I hesitate to use the word 'finished'
because websites are never 'finished', they always need something more doing to them.
This particular site has given me a great deal of grief - I've ventured into using XML.
I was very pleased with the result until I viewed it in Netscape.
Shock, horror, it looks real crap using non-IE browsers. Seems Mozilla doesn't support XML data islands !
Bastards !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I have no love of Microsoft but people who use Netscape, Opera etc have got to be a bit anal. Haven't they ?
Anyway I've set myself up as an ISP. A real ale ISP.
Please have a look at the site: www.real-ale.net
Please feel free to tell me what you think, good or bad, any feedback/error reports will be gratefully received.
Monday, 19th April 2004
Pointless
Can any one tell me the point of this ?
Working in what is laughably called a procurement position (I hate that sort
of bollocks) I get a number of cold calls. It's okay, as you occasionally
find good new suppliers that way. The calls I loathe are the owns that are
the industrial equivalent of the double glazing call.
"Hello Paul, and how are you today ?"
"Do I know you ?" (As if they cared a fuck !)
"Good, good"
"You very kindly helped us out with market research last year.."
"It's not our companies policy to answer questions on market research so we
can't have done"
"As a thank you we're sending you a fantastic gift. To make sure you get it
could we have your home address."
At this point I usually end the call with "no thank you not interested".
I'm never sure what they hope to gain. Like spam they must presumably have
some success, but at what cost ?
Their margins for whatever shit they're flogging must be huge, otherwise it
wouldn't be worthwhile. Sadly I suspect these operations not only cause
annoyance to the recipients of the phone calls but are probably also causing
a great deal of suffering to the poor sods employed to do this work.
The home improvements industry around here must be booming - I saw a new van
with some very classy sign writing on it, proudly proclaiming "Stuart Ball
Consevatorys". Now we all make mistakes, and I'd be the first to concede
that I my spelling could be better but surely if you're lashing out great
wads for sign writing, you're going to make sure the spelling is correct.
People just don't seem to care these days !
Tuesday, 20th April 2004
Someone's Got To Do It
It's a tough job, but someone's got to do it - ale to be drunk - mustn't let it go off !
The Bury Beer Festival starts tomorrow. Guess where I'm going to be going at regular intervals over the next few days ?
If I make any blog entries between now and Saturday, I can't guarantee their coherence.
Wednesday, 21st April 2004
As A Newt
Eleven different ales today, in two sessions. The Lady is learning how to drink beer, so she came along for a few sips.
Usual suspects there - people we only ever see at beer festivals - it's a strange world.
Good session early evening only marred by the chap sitting near me, clearly 11 pence short of a shilling, grinning inanely, nothing wrong with that of course.
but seemed to have this propensity for constantly breaking wind. God knows what he'd been eating, but the result was rather choice !
Cheers !
Sunday, 25th April 2004
Short
Four days and twenty-nine different beers, phew !
It was a good festival.
No ale today - spent the day pottering around the garden. Nothing nicer when the weather's good.
Monday, 26th April 2004
Identity Crisis
Unlike a lot of left of centre individuals, I don't have a
problem with identity cards.
I know that civil liberties groups get very excited about them, and quite
right too, but I am very comfortable with my identity.
I don't expect for one minute it'll do much to 'fight' terrorism and/or
organised crime. But unless you've been up to no good, why should you have
any objection to identifying yourself ?
The one problem would be if it became too 'smart', carrying information
about you that would enable organisations to discriminate against you in
some way.
It's a brave new world that we live in.
Thursday, 29th April 2004
Film Southwold Road Job
The jolly old interweb is a very strange monster indeed.
Like a lot of fellow bloggers I am completely bemused by the stats I get for my site. I look forward to them every week - they've become quite addictive.
Over the past few months I've been receiving Google Alerts on a number of subjects. Today I was surprised to see my blog at the end of this link.
It appears to be some kind of search engine connected to a jobs site, and I'm at the bottom !
Nurse, the screens !!!!!
Other Blogs:
If you like my blog, please link me from your website or blog (if you have one). Or just tell your friends, if you have any. Thanks.
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