Archive for February, 2004

Laugh til you Cry

Wednesday, February 18th, 2004

This little lot had me stifling gut wrenching laughter at work so much that I was in tears; from Peter Kay:

[thanks to the folks of tMP for supplying them]

1) Triangular sandwiches taste better than square ones.

2) At the end of every party there is always a girl crying.

3) One of the most awkward things that can happen in a pub is when your pint-
to-toilet cycle gets synchronised with a complete stranger.

4) You’re never quite sure whether to eat green crisps.

5) Everyone who grew up in the 80’s has entered the digits 55378008 in to a calculator.

6) Reading when your drunk is horrible.

7) Sharpening a pencil with a knife makes you feel really manly.

8.) You’re never quite sure whether its against the law or not to have a fire in your back garden.

9) Nobody ever dares make a cup-a-soup in a bowl.

10) You never know where to look when eating a banana.

11) Its impossible to describe the smell of a wet cat.

12) Prodding a fire with a stick makes you feel manly.

13) Rummaging in a overgrown garden will always turn up a bouncy ball.

14) You will always feel a bit scared when stroking a horse.

15) Everyone always remembers the day a dog ran into your school.

16) The most embarrassing thing you can do as a schoolchild is call your teacher mum or dad.

17) The smaller the monkey the more it looks like it would kill you at the first
given opportunity.

18.) Some days you see a lot of people on crutches.

19) Every bloke has at some stage while taking a pee flushed half way through and then raced against the flush.

20) Old women with mobile phones look wrong!

21) Its impossible to look cool whilst picking up a Frisbee.

22) Driving through a tunnel makes you feel excited.

23) You never ever run out of salt.

24) Old ladies can eat more than you think.

25) You can’t respect a man who carries a dog.

26) There’s no panic like the panic you momentarily feel when you’ve got
your hand or head stuck in something.

27) No one knows the origins of their metal coat hangers.

28.) Despite constant warning, you have never met anybody who has had their arm broken by a swan.

29) The most painful household incident is wearing socks and stepping on an upturned plug.

30) People who don’t drive slam car doors too hard.

31) You’ve turned into your dad the day you put aside a thin piece of wood specifically to stir paint with.

32) Everyone had an uncle who tried to steal their nose.

33) Bricks are horrible to carry.

34) In every plate of chips there is one bad chip.

35) Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit; Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad

The Genius of Peter Kay…

1) I saw a woman wearing a sweatshirt with ‘Guess’ on it. I said, ‘Thyroid
problem?

2) When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bike. Then I
realized that The Lord doesn’t work that way, so I stole one and asked
him to forgive me.

3) My mom was a ventriloquist and she always was throwing her voice.
For ten years I thought the dog was telling me to kill my father.

4) I’ve often wanted to drown my troubles, but I can’t get my wife to
go swimming.

5) I was doing some decorating, so I got out my step-ladder. I don’t
get on with my real ladder.

6) I went to a restaurant that serves ‘breakfast at any time’. So I
ordered French Toast during the Renaissance.

7) Well I was bullied at school, called all kinds of different names.
But one day I turned to my bullies and said - ‘Sticks and stonesmay break
my bones but names will never hurt me’, and it worked! From there on it
was sticks and stones all the way.

8. My Dad used to say ‘always fight fire with fire’, which is probably
why he got thrown out of the fire brigade.

9) Sex is like a game of bridge: If you don’t have a good partner,you’d
better have a good hand.

10) I saw six men kicking and punching the mother-in-law. My neighbor
said ‘Are you going to help?’ I said ‘No, Six should be enough.’

11) If we aren’t supposed to eat animals, then why are they made out of
meat?

12) I think animal testing is a terrible idea; they get all nervous and
give the wrong answers.

13) You know that look women get when they want s*x? Me neither.

14) When working a till in a shop and asking a woman for £3.42, and her replying “Do you want the 42?”… “Well yeah, otherwise it’d be 3 quid!!”

15) “I rang up for takeaway before I came out…
…do you deliver? No! Sorry Sir, we only do chicken and lamb”

16) William Shakespeare walks into a pub, and the Landlord says, “get out your bard!”

Peter Kay’s questions…

1. Why does your gynecologist leave the room when you get undressed?

2. If a person owns a piece of land do they own it all the way down to the
core of the earth?

3. Why can’t women put on mascara with their mouth closed?

4. Is it possible to brush your teeth without wiggling your *rse?

5. Why is it called Alcoholics Anonymous when the first thing you do is
stand up and say, ‘My name is Bob, and I am an alcoholic’?

7. Why is there a light in the fridge and not in the freezer?

8. Why does mineral water that ‘has trickled through mountains for
centuries’ have a ‘use by’ date?

9. Why do toasters always have a setting that burns the toast to a
horrible crisp no one would eat?

10. Is French kissing in France just called kissing?

11. Who was the first person to look at a cow and say, ‘I think I’ll
squeeze these dangly things here and drink whatever comes out’?

12. What do people in China call their good plates?

13. Why do people point to their wrist when asking for the time, but
don’t point to their crotch when they ask where the bathroom is?

14. What do you call male ballerinas?

15. Why is a person that handles your money called a ‘Broker’?

16. If quizzes are quizzical, what are tests?

17. If corn oil is made from corn, and vegetable oil is made from
vegetables, then what is baby oil made from?

18. Why is it that when someone tells you that there are over a
billion stars in the universe, you believe them, but if they tell you there
is wet paint somewhere, you have to touch it to make sure?

19. Do illiterate people get the full effect of Alphabet Soup?

20. Did you ever notice that when you blow in a dog’s face, he gets
mad at you but when you take him on a car ride, he sticks his head out of
the window?

Post Contest Blues?

Friday, February 13th, 2004

It looked like we weren’t going to get too many people turn up to the rehearsal last Tuesday, but in the end we maintained our excellent turn out to rehearsals. All the sections were full and we even had a couple of visitors, who even joined us in the pub afterwards. So if you’re reading this and thinking about coming along to Watford Band to see what all the fuss is about; get yourself along, you’ll be most welcome, you’ll have a good time both in the rehearsal and in the bar afterwards.

I think it’s testament to the enthusiasm and ability of Martyn our MD that we’ve got players queuing up to attend rehearsals despite our disappointment at the contest last weekend. After all banding is just a hobby (right Martyn?) and we’re there because we enjoy what we do regardless of whether we win a trophy or not. Sure it’s nice to win and I’m sure that will come as gain experience and confidence, but it’s not the be all and end all. For me I’d much rather be entertaining the public.

Looks like the rehearsals will be concentrating on the music for the CD and the area contest. I think this is good as we won’t get too bored with Partita as it keeps it interesting as we decide on a CD programme and practise those.

Martyn had also put out the beginnings of a summer programme and I noticed Buster Strikes Back was in there; gulp! Better get practising it again!

On another note, we had our first City Brass group rehearsal on Wednesday night. This is a 10 piece brass ensemble I play in based in St. Albans. We don’t have many gigs usually just 2 or 3 per year, but we’re all mates from various bands and it’s just another excuse to go out and play and then go to the pub afterwards! I got the opportunity to play on a trumpet that someone is selling. It’s a Yamaha 1320 model, which is their student line. Unfortunately all the slides were stuck so I couldn’t tune it and there’s no third valve slide ring to keep the low D and C# in tune:( I think I’ll look to get the next model up which has these or the Conn International as it was recommended by our first trumpet player (and also my former tutor), Ken Bache; can’t find a UK distributor for these though.

Vodafone == Pathetic

Friday, February 13th, 2004

I’m really cross now. I had an appointment to have a car kit for my mobile phone fitted to my car on December 9th, 2003. No-one showed up, not even a phone call to say they weren’t coming. To speak to them you were on hold for up to an hour and when I did eventually get through (by this time it was after the New Year) I was told the appointment had been put on hold. Well it wasn’t put on hold by me, but apparently the person who’d dealt with it had left the company.

The next date they could offer me an appointment was February 13th! I.e. today. So this morning I arrived at work early, booked a convenient parking space, and phoned to make sure they were coming and to find out what time. Guess what? 11am and I get a call back saying the engineer’s off sick and there’s no-one else that can do the install!

Now, if someone can’t do it because they’re off sick then that’s fair enough but given I’d already been put back by 2 months you’d have thought that they’d get someone to cover it. Plus, if I hadn’t phoned them this morning would I have got a call to let me know? I doubt it. Fortunately this time I’d kept my calendar free for today, but the first time I’d had to move an important customer meeting, only to be let down.

They have booked me in again for next Monday afternoon, but I’ve no confidence that this will happen, and I’ve lodged a complaint anyway. I can’t believe that they are understaffed as they’ll have known the new laws on the use of mobile phones in cars has been coming for a long time.

Come on Vodafone get your act together!

Fairly Painless

Wednesday, February 11th, 2004

Yesterday I finally switched the webserver, smtp server and imap/pop3 server over to the linux box I’ve been building. It was a relatively pain free exercise. All the websites are running on apache 2.0.48 with mysql 4.0.17 and php 4.3.4. Moving the latest mysql data across was trivial. The only hiccups were to do with URL rewrites to change .html to .php for the band and church websites and changing the paths to the required header file.

On top of that I also built the latest version of the Courier IMAP server. Squirrelmail just continued to work and I needed to add a relay directive to the Exim config so I can send e-mail via the new server from work.

I can now run MRTG properly (I never figured out how to do it for the XP box) so I can monitor traffic. I also upgraded AWStats too which was okay but I’ve lost some stats for January and February, but it’s not that important.

There should be no reason why this should ever need to be turned off when people come to stay so there’ll be an improved level of service. No more outages when I have to apply the latest Microsoft patch.

We came, we played,…

Tuesday, February 10th, 2004

…but we didn’t conquer.

I am, of course, talking about Watford Band’s performance at the recent Milton Keynes Brass Band Festival.

As I expected I was very nervous, but not about playing the music, I was more nervous about making sure everyone got there, had their tickets and registration cards, that we’d got a room to rehearse/warm up in, etc. In the end everything was fine. And if there’s one thing that we achieved on Sunday morning it was the fact that we turned out a full band comprising of our own players and not reliant on guests.

But we did achieve more than that. Okay we didn’t win, but we certainly didn’t disgrace ourselves either; we were just one point below the band above us, Hitchin Band. The comments received from members of the audience were positive and many members of the band have gained their first experience on the contest stage. I think we’ve gained another new player too.

I think Martyn gained a lot from the experience too. We didn’t all agree with the adjudicator’s comments but he did highlight overblowing which we know, as a band, that we can be guilty of. Having listened to the CD of our performance the tuning wasn’t bad, which is an area we’ve often fallen down on in the past. There are some moments when we’re not playing together, particularly in the cornet section; this could be down to the acoustics of the hall and nerves, but it’s something we probably need to work on.

The programme that we played was:

Britannia - A Salvation Army “Festival March” based on Rule Britannia
Crimond - A Wes Kendrick arrangement of the famous hymn tune
Doyen - A Goff Richard’s composition
La Mourisque - David Lancaster’s arrangement of Tylman Susato’s piece taken from The Dansyre

I think the adjudicator particularly enjoyed La Mourisque as this is a very good, new arrangement for brass band.

Now we can work hard for the “areas”, the London & Southern Counties Regional Brass Band Championships in Stevenage, coming up in March. At least this time we won’t have to deal with the subjective nature of programme choice as this is a set test piece, Edward Gregson’s Partita in our case.

Religious Boundaries

Monday, February 9th, 2004

BBC NEWS | Christian question alarms flight

When I first read the above article I thought, “what a nutter”, and then I started to think about whether there are boundaries to extolling a faith onto others. As a Christian and a preacher in the Methodist Church I am called to “those who have not heard”, however, I feel that this is a case where it was not appropriate. Am I stating the obvious?

Talk of a persons faith is an intimate, personal thing and it needs to be handled with sensitivity and dignity. This pilot certainly didn’t do either with his little speech, particularly in light of 9/11.

Do I share my faith at work and in social activities? Yes, but to the extent that people know I am a Christian and a preacher. If someone wants to go deeper than that then I’m happy to talk about it.

Where else do the boundaries of decency lie with respect to faith sharing I wonder?

In Print Again!

Monday, February 9th, 2004

Wesley Would Blog

Whoa, this came as a bit of a surprise this morning. There I was minding my own business catching up the few blogs I read when I discovered I’ve been put in print again. This time in The Methodist Recorder.

Great article by Rev. Richard Hall who writes in The Connexion, particularly the view that, had John Wesley been alive today he would have probably recorded his journal as a weblog.

This may go someway to explain the sudden, relative surge in visitor numbers to my site this past week. I’d better start writing something interesting then!

Getting Close

Friday, February 6th, 2004

I’ve just received a comment from Martyn, the MD of Watford Band and that has reminded me to post an entry about this week’s rehearsals.

First of all note that I said rehearsals; I’ve managed to get to both rehearsals this week. I like to attend both rehearsals leading up to a concert or contest as I get to learn about any last minute alterations to programmes or pieces or what have you.

The rehearsals this week were great. There was the danger of overdosing on the contest pieces as it’s the Milton Keynes contest on Sunday but we continued to work on new stuff first and then run through the contest programme later. Martyn’s dead right when he says that the band’s ability to sight read new pieces has improved dramatically. Not just reading the notes either, we’re also a lot better at taking in the dynamics, style, geography (repeats, etc.), key changes and tempo changes.

The run through of the contest pieces was very encouraging, on both nights we played them all very well and I think I’ve finally got the volumes sorted out as I didn’t blow my lip out before the end of the second piece! Actually, I think it was an exercise Martyn had us do before that cracked it.

At Tuesday’s rehearsal, Alan, one of our guest players for the contest, commented that the band sounded good which I think is also encouraging. I just hope we haven’t peaked too early and nerves/adrenalin don’t get the better of us on the day. I’m not sure whether I’m more nervous about the playing side or the organisational side. I’ll just have to make sure I’m there early to collect tickets and figure out where our rehearsal room is.

We owe Martyn some of his fees but at the committee meeting on Tuesday he asked our treasurer, Richard, to bring to the contest in cash so that he can stick it behind the bar if we win. There’s definitely an air of confidence about this contest. The band have done well in this contest before and it would be nice to do well and get in amongst the prizes at our first contest back after a couple of years break.

Martyn’s already got his eye on the Pontins contest at Prestatyn in October later in the year. Should make a good weekend away for the band, if they’re prepared to travel.

At the Thursday rehearsal last week Mike, our principal trombonist, handed out and arrangement of Basin Street Blues that he’d done as a trombone solo. It was superb, will be a great addition to our concert programme. Martyn has stated an aim that he wants to get our audiences singing along to our concerts so we’ve been getting new arrangements for things like La Bamba and Jesus Christ Superstar and some well known TV themes like the theme from Soldier Soldier, Musket Fife and Drum. Looks like a good summer season ahead for us providing we can get the gigs in.

Ikea Rage

Thursday, February 5th, 2004

Today I’ve had a day off, which was nice.

I had to fetch Euan back from nursery for the first time too and it was a bit embarrassing as I was having to ask what happened next, and which way round the school to go to get to the classroom (there are rules, you know). Anyway, it was nice to see Euan coming out all happy and smiley, but with green paint in his hair! Ever since he’s been going to his new school everything’s been a secret, but he’s now beginning to divulge what he gets up to and who he’s been playing with.

The main task for today has been to build the shelves we bought from Ikea last Saturday. Here’s one unpacked:

and here it is 20 minutes later!

Such a difference from the shopping experience at Ikea! We’d got there early, managed to get Euan into the play area whilst we went to shop which was a huge help. I was okay for about half an hour and then slowly but surely my blood pressure started to rise and almost lost it when I struggled to get the trolley free from the rack. Anyway, it was a nice Christmas present from my mum and we got to have the Swedish meatballs and chips for our lunch!

This week I’ve mostly been to…

Tuesday, February 3rd, 2004

…these countries:


create your own visited country map

It’s a bit inaccurate though as I haven’t been to Alaska and only to Montreal in Canada. There are lots of islands shaded red too that I’ve never set foot on but I guess they colonies or dependent territories of places I’ve been.

These are the places I’ve been to in the States: