Full Metal Wheelbarrow

Earlier this year I signed up to participate in Beta testing a new online game.

Today I got my invitation to join the closed beta. Cool, huh?

Yeah. Except that they provide a link to download the game client. Which is an .exe file.

Newsflash, game-making people - not everybody uses a Windows PC. Congratulations on alienating a sizeable group of potential customers and losing yourself their revenue.

This annoys me particularly because it's an online game and thus there's no sensible reason for it to be system specific. And that there doesn't seem to be any simple way to contact them to complain about it either. Bah!

Someone on Ebay is selling a battery-powered model wind turbine


My head hurts.

So today I'm trying to buy a new cash book for my accounts. And most of the office supplies websites have it at a good price, but also have a minimum order value of at least £20. Or they don't take Paypal. Or they insist on knowing my gender when I register for an account, which I find offensive both because it's none of their damned business and also because they phrase it as a binary choice, and for many people gender isn't as simple as that.

Bunch of insensitive and/or useless twonks.

Why are people so stupid?

My spam bin is currently full of messages from people, who, like me, have been added without their consent to a cycling mailing list by a chap called Martin Krieg, and who wish to be taken off said list.

Despite several messages posted to the list by those of us with a bit of a clue (and the fact that I include myself in that number is pretty scary really*) these folk continue to post their pleas to be taken off the list by replying to the list itself, which merrily sends their emails to everyone on it, thus worsening the existing problem. [headdesk]

Unfortunately the list owner appears to be using a gmail address and my clue doesn't extend to finding where (if anywhere) one can report the inconsiderate sod to Gmail as a spammer. Any advice on this front would be greatly appreciated.

Mr Krieg is apparently a respected cycle campaigner, but that doesn't make it OK for him to spam people.


* especially as I've just had it pointed out to me that I've been posting my book reviews twice to my own journal instead of sending one to the 50bookchallenge community. Thanks to Sherlock trishtrash  and jaelle_n_gilla Watson for their investigations on that front :-)

For them as haven't stayed in a UK Youth Hostel, they generally have a self-catering kitchen, where guests can bring their own food and make and eat meals, cups of tea etc. Utensils and pans and such are provided by the hostel, with the understanding that you clean up after yourself and put stuff back where you found it.

Most hostel kitchens have electric kettles for hot water, but the one we stayed at this weekend had a sort of boilery thing on the wall, with a spigot at the bottom for drawing the hot water off with.

On Saturday night, I was in the kitchen, making tea. I'd filled my teapot from the spigot and was toddling round to the fridge to get the milk, when I spotted another woman, who I'd have guessed to be in her early fifties, holding a jug under the hot water spigot. A glass jug. Obviously not Pyrex or anything like that, just an ordinary glass jug.

Thinking she must be confused  I said "You know that's hot water, right?"

"Yes." she replied, in a tone normally reserved for stupid nosey parkers.

I made a final attempt to avert disaster. "Won't it crack the jug?" I inquired.

Barely had I got the words out when she opened the spigot, and the jug proved me right by rapidly parting company with its bottom and sending near-boiling water over the counter and the floor. [facepalm]

I stayed out of the cleanup as I was shoeless, the better to be quiet on the creaky stairs and not disturb people (Old building. Beautiful, but old and creaky.). Fortunately no-one was hurt, but seriously - who survives into adulthood without learning that hot water and cold glass is a bad combination?

And if I'm the voice of reason, something is badly, badly wong.....

Well, on Friday I was happy to get to the weekend and have a bit of a rest :-)

At the weekend we went to visit Rob's parents and deliver their presents. We had a good trip  especially on the way out, as we left early and the roads were nice and quiet. I was gobsmacked on the way back by an eejit on the A46 who didn't seem to realise that when an ambulance zooms up behind you with its lights on you're supposed to get out of its way. The ambulance had to dodge round him in the inside lane in the end.

I was rather pleased with ( this picture ) of Rob's parents' cat Benny. He looks really fierce but is in fact hunting cuddles :-) He was very poorly as a kitten and has a permanent snuffle, but is the most snuggly cat I've ever known - he likes nothing better than to be picked up and cuddled. Except possibly eating :-)

Another facepalm moment this morning - I pulled up at the petrol station to refill on diesel and over the tannoy came the voice of the attendant, asking that the person at the car wash put out their cigarette !! What sort of total cretin doesn't know that cigarettes and petrol vapour are a mindbogglingly bad combination? Gah!

48. A Perfect Circle by Susie Kelly

I feel rather a Jekyll and Hyde in regard to this book. On one hand, I enjoyed much of the description of the author's visits to various interesting places in France as she and her husband travelled around the circumference of that country in their camper van. On the other hand, some of the things they did en route were so stupid and irritating that I was frequently struck with a strong desire to beat the pair of them with a wet mackerel.

It doesn't help that they are two of those people who call themselves vegetarians but are perfectly happy to eat fish and crustaceans. I understand  that some people find it easier to do this than to explain their precise dietary dos and don'ts to every waiter they encounter but I want to throw dictionaries at them anyway.

Then there was the van maintenance issue. Most people, I like to think, if they lost an important part of their exhaust system at the beginning of a long journey, would go to a garage and get it fixed. Not the Kellys. They proceeded to drive around for six weeks with this part missing, including through the Pyrenees, fercryinoutloud. Eventually, Mr Kelly obtained a kit from a supermarket and fixed it himself with the aid of an empty tuna tin, which had me wondering in frustrated annoyance why they hadn't just done that to start with. Idiots.

But the part that really annoyed me, to the point where I was seriously considering writing to the author and telling her what an idiot she is, was the incident when one of their dogs cut its foot badly, and was getting blood over everything but "wouldn't let" them look at it (which says to me that they were rubbish at dog training for a start). Did they rush to the nearest vet? No. They went and had coffee.  Nul points Mrs Kelly.

In fairness, they did take the dog to the vet a couple of days later, and were clearly trying to look after it,  but I lost all patience with them at that point.