Way's World

Friday, 31 October 2003

Just the two of us...

Linda's gone off on a jolly today to France - she's not due back till sometime tomorrow afternoon, so I've taken the day off to look after Molly, our dog. As you can see from the photo, we're struggling a bit on things to do...!!!!

Thursday, 30 October 2003

The Bird Woman of Poole!

Following on from an earlier post, the environmentally friendly woman's been at it again! She turned up to work this morning in tears, so we asked her what the matter was.

Apparently, while she'd been getting ready for work, a bird had flown into the window and knocked itself out. She ran outside and picked it up and, after fifteen minutes or so of care and attention, the little bird perked up. She then took it back outside where it flew onto her shoulder (at this point I had visions of Uncle Remus singing "Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah"). Having regained its strength the bird flew off and landed on her fence, pausing just long enough for a kind look back at the kind soul who saved him. This was a terrible shame, because at this point the woman's cat jumped up and ate him!

Still, that's nature!

Friday, 24 October 2003

Concorde's last flight... 8-(

Sadly, Concorde flew for the last time today - instead of taking 3 hours to cross the Atlantic, it will now take the standard (subsonic) 8 hours. View the history of this wonderful aircraft here.

Thursday, 16 October 2003

Googlewhacking!

I've found a googlewhack! "What?" I hear you ask...

Google, the search engine, is well known for finding thousands of results to most searches. Googlewhacking is where you enter two seemingly unrelated words into Google and one, and only one, result is found. There are a few rules - you're not allowed to use quote marks, the words must appear in the dictionary.com, and the result can't be a page that is just a list of words (a crossword solving site, or dictionary, for example). The rules for Googlewhacking can be found here.

Unfortunately, I can't tell you which two words I used in my Googlewhack, as Google could re-index this page and then there would be two pages showing the 'whack, thereby eliminating myself (but if your interested, and if you can find it, I've logged it in the Whack Stack, which is immune from Google's all powerful eye...!!!)

Wednesday, 08 October 2003

What a Pane...

I bought myself an 80Gb hard drive at the weekend, and (after some head scratching, a new IDE cable, and a BIOS flash) finally got it to happily co-exist with my existing drive. Then last night... my original drive failed. Bugger.

I've therefore spent this evening setting up my new drive from scratch, and have taken the opportunity to install Windows XP. Now I can't get my sound card working. Bloody machines!!!!!

UPDATE - I've just realised I hadn't plugged the speakers in... Doh!!!

Tuesday, 07 October 2003

Great Balls of Fire!

Just in case my friends & relations in Wales are feeling left out, take a look at this! Mind your head!!!!

Wednesday, 01 October 2003

Off to the Land of the Leprechauns!

Sorry I haven't made any posts for the last week, but Linda and I have been to Dublin in Ireland to visit my brother, sister-in-law, and (most importantly!) my niece Lucy! We landed a couple of hours ago, and now that I've unpacked I can tell you what we got up to! (If you would like to see all the photo's from the trip, click here)

Wednesday 24th September - we arrived at Bournemouth International Airport at 3.30pm and checked-in straight away. We had plenty of time, as the flight wasn't due to leave until 5.00pm, but better safe than sorry! We sat and had a coffee in the new airport lounge, then went through Passport Control to departures. The flight left on time and arrived at Dublin Airport ten minutes early, and although we had to wait a while for the luggage to come through, we got to Andrew & Julie's at around 7 o'clock. Andrew was at a conference in New Orleans, but Julie's mum Kathleen was on hand to help out with Lucy. Julie showed brilliant timing by having a meal ready pretty much immediately, and we spent the rest of the evening vegging out in front of the TV.

Thursday 25th September - Linda and I got the DART to Dublin and wandered round the shops! I bought myself a rather snazzy rugby top in Dublin colours, and Linda bought a fleece in the same colours. It was a lovely sunny day!

Friday 26th September - Kathleen was still helping out and was more than happy have Lucy for the day, so we thought we'd take the opportunity to go to Dun Laoghaire, so once again Linda & I jumped on the DART. I bought a medium sized fleece for me (which later turned out to be huge, and also had one sleeve longer than the other!) and for Lucy I bought a pair of slippers, a fleece, and a lovely little denim jacket with a woolly lining! When we got back to the house, we played with Lucy in the garden.

Saturday 27th September - Walked down to the seafront this morning - the picture below shows the view from Clontarf (click for a larger image).

In the afternoon, Julie, Linda & I took Lucy to the Botanical Gardens in Dublin.

They had some wierd and wonderful sculptures on display, as can be seen by the picture below (the sculpture is the one on the left of the picture...)

Sunday 28th September - We pretty much loafed around in the morning, but in the afternoon we dropped kathleen off at the train station and then headed out to the Liffey Valley Shopping Centre. Julie fancied a wander round, and as we weren't looking for anything in particular, we took Lucy for a stroll around the shops, meeting Julie a couple of hours later in the one of the many fast food joints upstairs.

Monday 29th September - We had Lucy all day - Andrew arrived home from his trip at around 8.00am and went straight to bed, so Linda & I took Lucy for a walk along the seafront, and in the afternoon, Linda, Lucy & I walked to Killester to do some food shopping. It was a nice day but the wind was blowing quite hard, and so it felt quite cold. That evening, Linda & I went to Les Amis, a restaurant in Clontarf. Linda had steak and I had (surprise, surprise) a margherita pizza, and we were both very pleased with the food - a bargain at less than 30 Euro!

Tuesday 30th September - Woke up this morning to rain, the first time since we'd arrived in Dublin. Andrew took Lucy to creche, so Linda & I decided to go to Dublin and take the tour bus around the sights. We stopped off at the Guinness Storehouse, home of the famous pint! The building itself was completed in 1904 and originally housed the fermentation process where the yeast is added to the beer. It's now been converted into a museum, charting the history of the Guinness family and the drink itself. The view from the Gravity Bar on the 6th floor is amazing - you can see in the image below the mountains to the south of Dublin City.

Later we wandered around the National Museum of Ireland, and also went on to see the memorial statue to Oscar Wilde.

That evening, Linda & I went back to Les Amis and this time Linda had King Prawns, while I had... pizza!!!

Wednesday 1st October - Got up early to say our goodbye's to Andrew, Julie & Lucy, then waited for the taxi to arrive to take us to the Airport and then - back home!