Chris and I have commented

About the quality of written English that we've had the pleasure of reading on blogs etc. Poor Randall's parents apparently only met on a social basis prior to his birth, based on his use of the language.

So when I saw the link on his site I had to take the test. The results I found a little surprising:


You are a GRAMMAR GOD!


Congratulations! If your mission in life
is not already to preserve the English tongue,
it should be. You can smell a grammatical
inaccuracy from fifty yards. Your speech is
revered by the underlings, though some may
blaspheme and call you a snob. They're just
jealous. Go out there and change the world.


How grammatically correct are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

While I'm still posting irrelevance and crap.....

Heaven is where the police are British, the chefs Italian, the mechanics German, the lovers French, and it is all organized by the Swiss.

Hell is where the police are German, the chefs British, the mechanics French, the lovers Swiss and its all organized by the Italians.

It's been a beastly day today

And I've had to come back to work tonight to tidy up for visitors tomorrow. So this seemed kind of appropriate (thanks to Ken through CMF).


OK, we all know that 666 is the number of the Beast, but did you know that...

670 - Approximate number of the Beast

DCLXVI - Roman numeral of the Beast

666.0000000 - Number of the High Precision Beast

665.9999954 - Number of the Pentium Beast

0.666 - Number of the Millibeast

/666 - Beast Common Denominator

666 x sq. rt (-1) - Imaginary number of the Beast

1010011010 - Binary of the Beast 6

1-666 - Area code of the Beast

00666 - Zip code of the Beast

1-900-666-0666 - Live Beasts! One-on-one pacts! Call Now! Only $6.66/minute.
Over 18 only please.

$665.95 - Retail price of the Beast

$699.25 - Price of the Beast plus 5% state sales tax

$769.95 - Price of the Beast with all accessories and replacement soul

$606.66 - Wal-Mart price of the Beast

$566.66 - Costco/Price Club price of the Beast

Phillips 666 - Gasoline of the Beast

Route 666 - Way of the Beast

666 F - Oven temperature for roast Beast

666k - Retirement plan of the Beast

666 mg - Recommended Minimum Daily Requirement of Beast

6.66 % - 5 year CD interest rate at First Beast of Hell National Bank, $666 -minimum deposit.

Lotus 6-6-6 - Spreadsheet of the Beast

Word 6.66 - Word Processor of the Beast

i66686 - CPU of the Beast

666i - BMW of the Beast

DSM-666 (revised) - Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the Beast

668 - Next-door neighbor of the Beast

- Number of the Blonde Beast
uh... what was that number again?

I'm not smug

but I am very pleased.

Ben passed his driving test first go this morning, with just 2 minor observations. For my friends not in the UK, you are permitted up to 15 minor observations before you're failed, however most people don't pass first go and the driving test is generally recognised as being quite difficult.



In a few hours he's off to Paris with a lad called 'Molly'.

Off to Chris's mum this afternoon

Chris isn't well again. This time it's a nasty cold, so she's staying home. It seems to have been something every week for the last 3, and now heading into the 4th. I'd suspect it's mostly reaction to circumstances, with her carrying the burden mentally of sorting stuff through from her dad, plus hidden grief coming out and pulling her down.

Anyway, I'm off to meet estate agents and show her potential flats in Bicester. She'd to move ASAP, although the housing market is fairly dead, or so we've been told. God can do good things with house moves in difficult circumstances.

Hope it's over soon for all our sakes.

Looking forward to Liv, Dan and Kita being over tonight. If Chris is too unwell then she'll hide in the bedroom.

I had to buy a new mower earlier this year.

Now if only I'd seen this earlier instead of that lousy cheap Chinese thing from Argos:



"Born to be why-y-yld"

Specially for Matt

Who is awaiting for his own, personalised roasting to arrive.



I hope that provides satisfaction sir.

Now that's what I call focussed!

Hilary really knows how to focus on the future.

Thanks everyone

You're pulling me out of my downward, inward looking spiral.

Looks like Haloscan is down for now.

Therefore comments are off.

Recently seen on a forum

Q: Why should you take two Baptists on a fishing trip rather than one?

A: If you only take one Baptist, he'll drink all your beer.

How can we walk without hypocracy? Is there a difference between being a hypocrit and giving in to sin, then regretting and repenting from it.


BTW being baptist has nothing to do with it, just in case anyone felt picked on - it was their joke, not mine.

A few things going on here.

Not sure what it is, but I find electronic components FASCINATING. And yes, I did go through the entire bill of materials, just in case. And with true German efficiency, Martin didn't leave a thing out, even if the power transformer took a pasting in transit.

This may be...

.......puerile, risque and generally indicative of a teenage sense of humour. Whatever.

I did find this article on The Register quite funny.

Since I'm mostly posting trivia....

Recipe for Meat Korma

Ingredients

400-500g lean light meat (turkey, chicken or pork)
1 small to medium onion
1 pot yoghurt
approx. half pint milk
2 table spoons of tomato puree
one third of a pack cream of coconut
2 cloves of garlic
level teaspoon sugar
salt to taste (add at the end)
Spices:
1 level teaspoon full turmeric
half teaspoon ground cumin
half teaspoon ground coriander
quarter teaspoon cinnamon
quarter teaspoon fennel
about 10 cardamom pods
root ginger if available

Method

1) Finely chop and fry the onion and garlic in oil until light golden. Add the meat and fry until light brown.
2) Use a little extra oil if the meat is fairly dry. Add the spices and fry for 2 minutes, stirring to coat the meat and to prevent burning.
3) Add the milk and yoghurt, taking care not to let the mix boil. Stir in the tomato puree, the sugar and simmer for about 20 minutes. If the liquid level drops then add a little water.
4) Chop the cream of coconut and stir it in until it has melted and dissolved. If a more coconutty flovour is desired then add desiccated coconut (and almonds, if feeling especially flash).
5) Serve with spiced rice (try adding about 1 teaspoon of cinnamon OR half teaspoon cinnamon and one teaspoon of turmeric plus a pinch of salt) and naan bread.
For a bit of variety add sliced up green and red peppers at the same time as the cream of coconut, OR for a Kashmiri style dish, leave out the cream of coconut and thicken the sauce with plain flour. Add a sliced banana or two shortly before serving.

Have fun with it.

Just found this in an old archive folder while looking for another document.

If you feel the need to pray for someone today -

Can I recommend Steph to you.

She lost a partner 15 years ago, but has never escaped the pain. Yesterday was the anniversary of the crash that (eventually) killed him.

Can I also ask you to pray for us as a company while we're trying to work things through. Especially for William - the MD - out in the US right now, under extreme stress and facing deadlines.

Funny how a week

Can make certain events seem like years ago. Reading through, it's had not to be touched by the intense sadness that's entered so many lives through this.

Calling Dr. Matt

He'll be here soon, on the scrounge for some N-Maleimidocaproic acid and a few cells.

Think I'll go hide in the loo!

Calling Dan

If you want to go for a ride this afternoon, give me a call - I don't have your mobile.

The Tertl.blog sex edition.... Where do dirty old men come from?

*snip* a longer, rambling post, removed.

I'm not sleeping - woke up at 5 (got to bed at 12.30) and the brain's been buzzing.

Wondering about how odd we are about sex.

How society STILL tries to politely hide it, while in almost schiztophrenic fashion, shouts about it through the written medium.

How if you're 'young' sex is fine, while if you're old it's a taboo subject.

Maybe I'm not fully awake still. It seems to me that there is an inconsistency. Yet the more I try to analyse it in an interesting/amusing/useful fashion, the more I answer my own questions and wonder why I'm asking them in the first place.

One thing has made me wonder for a long time.

What makes someone a dirty old man?

When you're a teen, lust is a normal part of life (for at least half the male population, anyway).

When you're in your 20s, ditto.

30s, ditto.

40s? Well, I'm half way through, and little has changed, other than a much better understanding of the implications of my actions than I had when I was a teenager.

50s? 60s? 70s?

Are men supposed to have an inbuilt mechanism that makes them close down their wishes and the psychological habits of a lifetime? Since sex is mostly mind games, why would a failing body make them think about it any less - probably the reverse!

So when Chris and I saw a guy in London kissing a girl easily young enough to be his daughter in a way that suggested she wasn't, why were we both a little surprised.

Some of this was spurred by the conversation we've had here. The suggestion that there were certain things people couldn't discuss with us: like sex for example. Some of these thoughts have been running around my brain is various less presentable forms for a long time.

Maybe that's the answer?

A dirty old man has the same thoughts as the rest of the male population. Just that they express them differently? In that context, is viagra a blessing or a curse?

Will I need it to become a dirty old man

Cookies should crumble

I've held antipathy against cookies as long as they've been a significant feature of the WWW - pretty much since '97. I understand why they have a use for sites that sell, although it irritates me to be counted each time.

But for blogs, when all I want to do is comment, there should be absolutely no need.

Firefox has a facility to delete any of the cookies it's received and to block cookies from the sites that set them afterward. So I went through this PC the other day, noting with annoyance all the tracking cookies from various blogs I visit regularly, and deleting them, although with the ad-trackers etc. This isn't the first time I've been through and angrily deleted them, but it's the first time I've purposely blocked them. It appears that these cookies were also tied into the comments system of those blogs. Unless the prairyfusion server has crashed (not too unusual) if I try to post a comment I get a 'session undefined' error.

Cookies required to comment? NUTS.

At the moment I'm wondering whether to reinstate cookies or go without commenting on this PC. I'll probably reinstate because of the importance of those individuals, but it's a real annoyance.

I am not.....

You are Snoopy!

Just had my amp furniture arrive.

No, that wasn't free word association.

Tuesday week I ordered stuff like vintage style leather handles, Nickel plated cabinet corners, screws and a bunch of resistors so I can finish off the amp head and speaker cabinets that I've made recently. The resistors are to let me bipass the tone stack in the amp head and there's also a high voltage variable resistor to let me adjust the clean/dirty characteristics of the amp.

I'd ordered from a company in the US called Antique Electronics, and compared to UK prices, it was incredibly cheap. The amp handles were $11 each vs £20 each here. Ditto the corners: $0.95 each vs about £4 each here. Even getting stung £10.53 surcharges for importing (£4 customs, £6 'administration' fee by post office) I reckon this has still come in around half price. Now I've just got to round off the corners of the cabs, stain them, fit the furniture and add speaker cloth.

Sounds easy when you say it quickly.

We had some 'interesting' news at the weekend.

The company I work for is being sold to a large American corporation.

We're a truly mult-lingual company

I've just heard a couple of guys here having a conversation in Zulu.

Maybe we should have hired them to Kita for her Africa day.

We're off to the funeral shortly

Father, I want to thank you for the life You gave Lawrence.

That even though people predicted a life of weakness and disability when he was a boy, instead he had a full and happy life.

You guided his steps, whether he knew it or not, so that he walked in honesty and love. You protected him from harm, and took him to places where he could flourish.

You gave him a loving family, and enabled he and Eileen to create an environment of love and security. In his retirement You made it possible for him to make some of his dreams become real, and to travel widely

In your love you gave him good health to the end of his days, and spared him all the indignities of old age. When he did have trouble he remembered you, and wanted to look for you.

Father, thank you that you were aware of him, and blessed him. We trust to Your grace and mercy for him now. We ask you to go with us and touch our lives in the days ahead, and to bring your comfort to us.

Thank you Father.

Amen


Closing prayer.

A very sad place

Postcards

Can you recognise

40 things that only happen in films?

Here it is Matt.

weeeeeeeeeeeeee

hehehe

Matt

another day another dollar... and hopefully another blogg post... where is it Toni!!!
Mr Hazell | 10.06.05 - 4:46 am |

I'm recycling posts since I've not a lot to say for myself.

,img src="http://www.cyclespot.com/forums/images/smilies/nospeak.gif">

Apparently the RIAA are mobsters?

Well this woman thinks so. By the definitions of that particular law it appears they are.

Don't know who the RIAA are? Then just don't download music 'free' off the internet.

Goodbye Magical Trevor

Or Matt Hazell, as he's otherwise known.

Unfortunately he's now left to start his PhD at Oxford Brookes. Think we'll miss him and the gentle edge of daftness he brought to work. Come back soon ma homey.

Another weekend over

Wonder why I'm finding communicating SO awkward right now - just can't seem to put a coherent string of words together. Or notes for that matter: the guitar playing feels like it's gone right down the tubes (pun).

Chris and I went out for dinner on Saturday evening, and at least we managed to talk to each other. If we'd stayed home then she'd have been in the kitchen making cards while I'd have been surfing or fiddling with guitars. But talking was useful, and although I felt really clumsy, saying things in a way I didn't mean, we did managed to pass information and understanding.

Probably one of the higher points was seeing Nikita and Dan yesterday.

I'm not feeling especially 'spiritual' either right now. Just tired and a bit dizzy really.

And sometimes overwhelmed by all the things I've not done/failed to do right.

Oh well, back to work. Life goes on.