Zorac's LiveJournal

Well, once again my horses from the office sweepstake didn't do terribly well. One was the first horse to fall - and at the first fence. The other did manage to finish - but in last place. Ah, well...

Three years ago, it was a different story - I had my aunt to visit for the weekend, and she'd been staying with friends on Friday night. One of her friends had a brother who was a jockey in the National, riding on a horse called Red Maurader. Naturally, my aunt had to have a punt on the 33-1 outsider, and after a particularly gruelling race in which only 5 horses finshed, who should come first but the one on our ticket! Naturally, in true Rigby-Jones fashion, we took the proceeds and went for a slap-up meal - and at those odds we had a very good time!

(Most of) my plumbing issues have been fixed now. Apparently the immersion heater took two fuses and a trip switch with it when it died - impressive! Anyway, time to break out the Lush!

AOL may be home to legions of netspeaking plebes going 'Me Too!', but sometimes they do us all a service:

Evil Spammer: Generic Viagra!
Evil Spammer: Cheap Mortgages!
Evil Spammer: Hot Porn!
Evil Spammer: Phony Degrees!
Evil Spammer: Septic Tanks!
Evil Spammer: Nigerian Money!
AOL: *lawsuit*
AOL takes Evil Spammer's car and all his money
Evil Spammer: Woe!
AOL: Members: Win a Spammer's Porsche!
Spam-hating Internet Users: Muahahahaha!

Read AOL's pun-filled press release here.
More snarkiness can be found over on Slashdot.
BBC News article here.

Plumbers are here!

*does t00by dance*

Update: Remember how I called the water board? They gave me the location of the stop tap:

in cover in pavement
opposite fish shop
try one off them

(and yes, the amusing misspelling is theirs). Unfortunately, the plumbers have tried all the covers and located no water taps. This means that I've got the water board coming out agin tomorrow to do their job properly so that the plumbers can then do theirs.

*does the dance of d00m*

As many of you have probably already read on hermorrine's journal, I was over in Chicago again last weekend. ( Collapse )

Thanks to the undocumented challenge, on this trip I achieved my AAdvantage Gold status - more miles and other benefits for me, huzzah!

In related news, I really ought to talk about what happened at New Year's. ( Collapse )

Gacked from a magazine:

A man gets into a cab in Washington and as they're driving along the driver asks: "Say, buddy, you heard the latest George Bush joke?"
The passenger leans forward and says: "I am George Bush."
The driver replies: "OK then, I'll explain it really slowly..."

Well, it made me laugh. A lot.

In other news, I finally have a plumber organised for Monday - this means that I'll be shopping for taps tomorrow.

...or so it seems. Finding a plumber is proving to be a tricky business. Yesterday I had the joy of a plumber who never called back. Today's attempts have failed to find a plumber who isn't already booked solid for at least the next 2-3 weeks. Tomorrow, I may be reduced to working through the entire plumbing section of the Yellow Pages. I was amused, however, to discover that there's a plumber by the name of P Crapper...

I just had a couple of random emails from Amazon. One of them was to apologise for their screw-up in sending me an email over the weekend saying that the Prisoner of Azkaban DVD was available for pre-order. The other was to tell me that they've dropped the price on the Blake's 7 box-set I bought a couple of weeks ago - and are going to refund the difference to my credit card. W00t! Mind you, considering that my sums the other day showed that I've sent well over £3,500 worth of business their way over the last few years, it only seems fair ;-)

Update: Just had another one come through. I like this new new post-sale discount thing!

See that icon? That's one of my windows, that is. Happened ages ago, but the building management folks never returned my call and the Christmas happened and I never got around to sorting it (it's only the outer pane of the double glazing that's bust). Now, I have a more urgent issue - after a week or two of increasing ropiness, my hot water has died entirely. To add to the fun, the main stop-tap for the flat is sheared off - meaning that there's no way to cut off the water supply and facilitate major plumbing work. I called the management people last week and spoke to a nice man who couldn't answer my questions and told me that the guy I really needed to speak to was on holiday. Just now, I called back to discover that rather than being back as expected, this chap is trapped in Cyprus and they have no idea when he'll be back. Oh, joy, oh rapture.

Hopefully, somebody there will be able to help me soon - at the very least I need to know where the building stop-tap is so that I can get the one in my flat fixed (I'm leaning towards the "beg forgiveness rather than ask permission" option as regards to turning off the building at this point). Thankfully my gym membership is really coming in hand - at least I can use the showers there to stave off smelliness for the time being...

Update: Shock, horror! I got a call back! Unfortunately, it was mostly to say "Now't to do wi' us. We don' know nuffink." and tell me to RTFLA. Unfortunately, while the lease agreement does tell me whose responsibility the repairs are (both mine, alas), it doesn't (as he claimed) have information leading to the whereabouts of the stop tap. This leaves me Up the Amazon on a Rubber Duck (any minute now, piranhas will infest the not-hot water tank...) Say it with me: d00med.

Update 2: Two thumbs way up to Thames Water! I got straight through to a nice chap who knew what he was talking about and arranged for someone to come out and do a trace and leave me a note with the details (including which, if any, of the other flats will be affected). The downside is that it will take 5-7 days, but as they're not charging me to do this, I can't really complain (he did also point out that a rebutable plumber can freeze the pipes to allow work, but as there's about half an inch between the stop tap and the floor, that's not an option for me).

I've had a report of the following email going to someone with a t00b.net email account:

Dear user of T00b.net,

Some of our clients complained about the spam (negative e-mail content) outgoing from your e-mail account. Probably, you have been infected by a proxy-relay trojan server. In order to keep your computer safe, follow the instructions.

Pay attention on attached file.

Have a good day,
The T00b.net team http://www.t00b.net

This email is not from me; the address etc has been forged. The attachment is almost certainly a virus which will install one of the aforementioned proxy-relay trojan servers on your machine.