The gift that simply keeps on giving. ‘914 scam’ - if you don’t know the correct name, you may already be doomed to failure. ‘reasons for isolation’ - spending too much time on the Internet searching for ‘reasons for isolation’. “craig gordon” “ian curtis” - odd combination of a dead pop star and a living Sunderland goalkeeper. ‘my wife’s shapely legs’ - yeah right. Take those stockings off. Now. “(“current vacancy” or vacancies or opportunity or careers or “working with” or “working for”) and (“oracle dba” or oracle dba )and london” - with such a superlative grasp of search term syntax and semantics, you would simply be wasted as an Oracle DBA. ‘dead bodies in the floor boards’ - stop it. You are worrying me with the use of ‘in’ as opposed to ‘under’. ‘how to become a virgin again’ - Please sit down. Have a drink. I have some bad news for you. ‘ian curtis hanged ice block’ - Look I’ve already told you twice This is an urban myth. ‘make friends under 14 to 16’ - try Facebook or Beebo. Just don’t get caught. ‘oracle killed siebel’ - Mr. Ellison with the lead piping in the library. ‘selling strategy of siebel system anatomy’ - yet another reason I don’t work in sales. ’the most important decision of my entire life’ - undoubtedly left disappointed at my lack of insight. ‘urinal pulled his zipper down’ - yet another reason I always favour a private cubicle. ‘why durex gossamer withdrawn’ - apparently on the advice of the Pope.

Last night, I flew home to London from Hamburg, near Germany. The flight was punctual and uneventful enough apart from the fact I was sitting next to a blind man. When the seat belts sign extinguished, he got his laptop out, booted up and started typing into a completely black screen. So, I assumed he must be blind and using a braille keyboard. However, this gentleman wasn’t blind. He had been reading ‘High Life’ while we taxied onto the runway. Oh and he also had a complimentary copy of the Financial Times. ...

For reasons that are too long and tedious to recount here, I have had cause to rebuild my Lenovo T61 laptop many times over the last month, using a bewildering range of operating systems, Linux distributions, live CD’s and dual boot configurations. During this time, gparted and an external USB 500GB disk drive have become very close and reliable friends. In fact, I have only lost data once and, inevitably, that was due to my own stupidity. ...

Rejoice ! After 18 months, Rupert and Richard have ended their standoff and the Sky channels will be returning to Virgin Media. Now, I wonder if some kind soul could fill me in on the last 18 months of ‘Lost’.

Occasionally, I commute into London on South West Trains. I normally listen to music or podcasts during the half hour commute into Waterloo. Whenever I buy a ticket at the station, I always pause the music and remove my earphones. This is for two reasons: I need to be able to communicate with the person to purchase my ticket. People behind me in the queue may not want to hear ‘Serve the Servants’ by Nirvana. Last Monday morning, I joined a short queue to buy my Travelcard and removed my earphones as usual. ...

Surrey Traffic Police should run a recruitment campaign with the tagline ‘Join Surrey Traffic Police and see the world.’ This would appeal to young men who fancy the glamour and travel traditionally associated with the Armed Forces but are slightly wary of losing their lives in Iraq or Afghanistan. In August, I hired a car mid-way through my holiday in Venice to drive to the foot of the Dolomite mountains and also took the opportunity to visit Lake Garda. ...

Although I will always associate Paul Ince with the phrase ‘big time Charlie’, I do think the Blackburn manager talks a lot of sense. In particular, I think he was correct in his assessment of Celtic’s display at Old Trafford on Wednesday night in the Champions League. Apart from a few early promising moments, I think the gulf between the two sides was embarrassing. In fact, when I first tuned in to watch the game, initially I thought I had got the dates mixed up and I was watching United playing Norwich City in the Carling Cup. ...

18 months ago, I reviewed the online editions of the leading UK newspapers and the various syndication options. At that time, all the newspapers only offered partial text feeds which, in my opinion, is understandable but unsatisfactory. So I was pleasantly surprised to read in ReadWriteWeb that The Guardian has broken ranks and now offers full text RSS feeds. It will be interesting to see whether this increases subscribers for The Guardian and whether the competition will be persuaded to follow suit. ...

During a ritual purge of ‘Inbox’, I just discovered the following email Years ago, in a different life. I worked as an Oracle DBA for a dot com in deepest Clapham. For reasons that now escape me, the CEO managed to get a discounted rate so we could all lie in complete darkness in a flotation chamber listening to whale music with joss sticks burning. Performance was pretty bad and the backups never got done but we were all completely relaxed about it. ...

From the desk of Mr. Ashley. Good day. Private message to you. I know you don’t mind me contacting you by this means since we have not met before this time. My name is Lord King Glorious Michael ‘Haway the Lads’ Ashley. Recently, my Uncle’s (Sir Robert Robson of Gateshead) will was read and to our joy and relief, he has kept the sum of $8 milion USD in trust for the upkeep of the beloved Newcastle Footballing Club. ...