What makes you happy ?

I go into a stationers shop and ask if they fax things.
Yes says the lady behind the counter. I hand her 7 sheets of paper and she faxes it.
“Where is it going please?”
“Does it matter?”
“Yes it does so I need to know where it was going”
“It just went to America - why does that matter?”
“It’s going further so it costs more”

The way she said it I genuinely believe she think it really does actually cost more. I wonder if she knows just how a fax works? Do the company teach her?

And I had 2 great domain ideas on the way into the city and each of the name variations isn’t available. Damn.

Some 10 days ago one of the laptop went back to HP because of a faulty trackpad. Today I get and email invite to complete their “Customer Service Evaluation” form. I rang HP and enquired as to the state of affairs. The first lady - her voice was really quiet and I had to repeat myself several times. The guy in repairs seems to be talking from a heavy plant site. They are waiting for the touchpad. So that’s a week or more…
So I go to check and see what questions they ask in this little survey.

Those arrows threw me. Surely the one on the right should indicate progress through the survey not a backward step? Maybe the forward arrow is there because of where the answer buttons are? It looks wrong though - why not a nice big => instead? Surely the arrows should be different in colour / size. How did they come up with that and I wonder if they track how people get through the form.

Either way, I can’t give accurate feedback because the experience is not yet complete. It can’t be that hard to link ‘Job Complete’ with ‘Ask for feedback’ can it?

The passage of time has dulled my appetite for the rowing machine (plus my technique is shot) so I’m spending lots more time on the x-trainer. Which is okay - I can watch TV. It was Diagnosis Murder the other day. Gripping stuff. Today though the gadget I plug the phones into was broken, the new music in the zen hadn’t transferred well so I had no distractions. Bad. Until this lad came in.
A genuine chav. Off-white long shorts, England top, burberry checked baseball cap, expression like a bulldog chewing a wasp. He wanders around the machines for a bit then perches on a bike. He then proceeds to sit upright and pedal with no obvious resistance. His feet were a positive blur. He is sat still, arms folded, looking at everything going on in the gym behind him (the bikes are at the front under the TV’s with the mirrors in front of them) and if you saw him from the waist up you would have no idea he was exercising. You know the Road Runner cartoon? Where the feet are a blur but everything else is clear and crisp? It was like that. Apart from the sweating. Naturally the guy is sweating. Nothing unusual in that. He finishes his ‘ride’, his feet appear and he wanders off around the machines again. Still sweating. He left some minutes later and despite the sweating and the heat he hadn’t even touched the baseball cap. It remained firmly in place. Chav and Proud.

(The thing with his feet whirring round.. I can’t be the only person who sees others on real bikes who are going along a flat road in 1st gear. Their feet are spinning like mad things while they barely move forward. There is no economy of energy there - none. Why do they do that? Can’t they find the gears? If they drive do they never leave 1st gear? How do they cope on hills? Weird.)

8:30pm. Me, P and Winston go out for his evening walk. We take him off the lead where the blue dot is at the bottom. It’s a path/cyclepath with grasses and bushes/trees either side. As it’s dark we play hide and seek with the dog to help wear him out a bit. All this happens on the orange part on the left. We are on/off and over that path constantly and it’s only 7 feet wide. We can see everything that might pass. Nothing did. We played for about 20 minutes.

As is normal we then headed over the roundabout. There are no houses here, no buses, it’s just a series of road intersections and crossings. We get to the other side and about where the orange line stops are some barriers we pass through.This is a daily walk and I always let Winston off the lead. So I did. Me and P started walking and I get to the point where I can see round that slight curve (it’s where I saw a stoat a few weeks ago). I’m looking downhill. I see a person where the red dot is. You can tell when someone is walking to you or away can’t you? This person was coming toward. Winston was ahead of me and I wanted hom closer and on the lead so I turned and told P to hide. She ducked behind a huge rock that is there (there are several to prevent “travellers”) and I called to Winston that P was gone. I’d looked away for a matter of a few seconds. And the person had gone.
To get from where they were out of my sight they would have had to run. Or hopped straight into the undergrowth. They were not moving away from me, of that I am absolutely certain. We always walk down to the bottom curve - there’s a gate there - and tonight we did the same. Both me and P had seen this person, we both thought they were coming at us and we both knew there was no way they could realistically have got out of our sight. But we didn’t see them. It was one of those “Someone is watching me” moments. I talked loudly. I kept a good grip on the dog lead and worked out the arc of my swing. I walked confidently. I wished I’d remembered my mobile. I watched every move Winston made - but then Great Danes aren’t known for their sleuthing noses. And I constantly looked behind us on the way back. Really odd. Spooky.

Why has no-one trumpeted the big bonus of no carry-on luggage? No more idiots trying to squeeze huge bags into small spaces. No waiting for ages in the aisle as someone decides they want something from their bag and when their partner gets it they say “No.. the other one!”, no more draining waits after landing as the bags are got, dropped, and strapped to shoulders then bounced on the still sitting heads. Isn’t this a Good Thing? Add in the fact that there will be no crinkly sweet wrappers, no people singing along “silently” to their ipods … the bonuses far far outweigh any sort of inconvenience for me. In fact it has the potential to be a pleasure flying this time :)

You know how when you shut the fridge you wonder if the light really does go off? And that you know there is the button that the door squashes and you’ve pressed it to check it works? But you maybe still aren’t really really sure?
It does you know. That little bulb does go out.
From the National Grid:

The power surges are mainly down to people making cups of tea, switching on lights and getting drinks from fridges during breaks in the action.

Now if the light was on, opening the fridge wouldn’t matter would it? So it must be off! That’s another of life’s little mysteries solved while glancing through the BBC.

Spoilsports.

I’m reading ‘You know you got soul’ by Jeremy Clarkson. In it he says that in a fight between Superman, James Bond and the Terminator that James Bond would win. I think he is totally wrong on that. Way off beam.
Take the gadgets away from JB and he’s nothing really compared to the others. Okay so he’s fitter than me, his chiselled good looks attract more than my mug and he has a way with women I can only dream of but compared to the two opposing guys, his teeth are full of sand.
Down to two ….. Superman / Terminator. There’s only one Superman (that Smallville stuff is about him isn’t it? Ignore that then) but there are a few T’s. I suppose I should pick T3 even though the bad guy in T2 is better (Heh, I nearly said cooler). So…. S or T. S - can fly, laser beams, strong but looks crap. T - sturdy, shoots BIG guns, looks better but is robotic / synthetic. The Californian one isn’t afraid of green rocks or a guy called Zod either. So Superman can fly around, do all his laser beams, freezing breath and throwing rocks / buses but Terminator takes it all and waits til the red-panted one gets close enough to bop him one. My money is therefore on Terminator. See Clarkson? You are wrong mate :)

I’m not that fit and I’m not too overweight. I don’t look too bad in a Tshirt either. Not great, but not bad. Red isn’t quite my colour though which is why I’ll not be purchasing or wearing an England World Cup top / tshirt. Another reason will be that I do not play football. (I’ve also never been to a match either). And lastly, final reason I will not be buying one is that I do not believe wearing such a Tshirt either makes me - or makes me look - any fitter. Unfortunately, there were many very overweight blokes who even if they sucked their stomachs in would still have enough overlap to cover their crotch who obviously do think a Tshirt has some magical powers.

Ladies - it’s only May, you have time to make amends. Tops with thin straps and then skanky bra straps? No. Please. And if we DO have to see any part of them, grey is just so not you. Okay?

And no, there was none of that going on either.

There was one I noticed on the way into Asda to do the weekly shop and like when you buy something new you tend to suddenly see everyone wearing / driving the same I spotted lots of them as I shopped. Why can’t some people stand up straight?
I don’t mean the elderly, I don’t mean the very young who are not so much walking as ‘not falling over’ - I mean loads of people from teenagers to ‘men in suits’. Some were slouching, some - mostly the teenagers - were swaggering so their spine stayed in the vertical for hardly any time but there were many who looked like their genetics had not moved forward for thousands of years. Had they possessed jutting eyebrows it would not have surprised me. I felt like I’d stepped into a Lowry painting. There was one woman (girl) with a kid in tow (probably called Britneeeee) who was ’stood’ in front of me at one point. She pushed the kid, pushed the trolley and reached for items but her back position remained the same. How can this be apart from some malformation caused by undeveloped genetics? I’m glad I didn’t need any plasters - I suspect they would have sold out today.

Just as the bus gets to the outskirts of town there is a short row of buildings, some of which are shops. In the 23 years I’ve been in this city one has not changed (amazingly), one of the others has changed twice and the other 5 or 6 seem to change almost yearly. I noticed that on the way in so while wandering I looked a bit more closely at shops. Apart from obvious rebuilding and what I think would be normal ‘turnover’ of premises there was nothing odd. I went down another street (I wasn’t exploring - there was a shop I wanted to check anyway) and again I saw the same effect - shops that just can’t seem to keep an identity.
Behind each one of course is the ‘human story’ but what puzzled me was the optimism. Someone buying a business you would think will have checked the property, seen it’s history, checked the businesses close by, looked at shopping patterns, talked to owners about passing trade - in other words they’ll have done their homework. But they haven’t. It cannot be the same reason for all the same businesses to fold can it? Do estate agents see these people coming? I suppose they do - their ‘lies’ + the optimism of the ’soon to be a business owner’ must equate to a guaranteed commission - and do they mentally note the next commission for the very same sale?
There’s a difference between “Come on, let me have a go” when you are talking about wiring something or doing a crossword and the “I’ll be a millionaire this time next year”. Optimism.. it’s a wonderful thing. Shame reality pops that bubble though …..