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Three, err, lucky people won the following, err, prize at the recent Oracle Partner Network day at UKOUG in Birmingham.

3 lucky winners have won a Virgin Experience Voucher to the value of £140.

Norman. Come here. I have a crisis. Quickly.

Whats up ?

'I have a flat tyre.'

It is dark. Mainly because it is 7.30 at night. I sigh inwardly and get a torch.

'Hmm. You're right. That tyre really is flat. Didn't you notice the car pulling to the right ?'

'No. The car was driving fine. Norman Junior did say that the car was leaning and he kept falling over though.'

'Hmm.'

'Look. I really need the car for work tomorrow. Shall we just re-inflate it ?'

'No. It will just be completely flat again by morning. Just drive round to the tyre place first thing and get it replaced.

'I'm not driving on that tyre. It's on the rims and might make things worse'

'Don't worry. The tyre place is only 800 yards away. I've driven with a flat tyre on the rims before. Just drive slowly.'

'No. Let's put the spare on.'

So we get a Swiss army penknife out of the boot. The multi-purpose device includes a red warning triangle, a first aid kit, a car jack, several spanners and a foldaway picnic table. After several hours, after inadvertently firing two distress flares, we work out how to assemble the jack and extract the spare tyre.

'What does that yellow sticker say ?'

'It's a temporary tyre. You're not supposed to drive long distances using it.'

'What does that massive '80' mean ?' 'You're not supposed to drive over 80 miles per hour but that won't be a problem for you tomorrow morning.'

We locate the jacking point and replace the tyre.

'Why is this tyre so small ? Look at it compared with that one !'

'It's an emergency tyre designed just to get you to a garage. It will be fine for work in the morning and then you can get it changed later.'

'Oh. I don't know. I'm not happy driving on this. I think I will just drive round to the tyre place first thing and get it changed.'

'OK. So we just changed this tyre in the dark and rain for no reason.'

Engtech has some great references stressing the importance of the blog title when trying to attract readers.

However, this merely confirms what I already knew. A couple of weeks ago, I posted this entry which brought a trickle of traffic from TailRank. This, in turn, brought another article about the same news story to my attention.

My post was titled: '361 days to go'

The other article was titled: 'Black Cat Thunderbolt Rocket Up The Arse'

Some of us have it. Some of us don't.

Phil McIntyre is busy blogging right now.

Some principled bloggers leave all comments untouched afraid that any subsequent edit (no matter how seemingly trivial) would represent the slippery slope to censorship, a police state, the inevitable involvement of Amnesty International and charity gigs by U2.

Apart from a single comment by a member of the BNP, I have never had this problem until now.

A new comment on the post #45 "music for a (very) long car journey"
Mate, you're a dick
A new comment on the post #485 "flowery twats"
Mate, it was obviously you're fault you twat.

However, I chose to delete these comments because:

1. I dislike such profanity.
2. The twat didn't even get the joke in 'flowery twats'.
3. Misuse of "you're" in #2.

Yet another trackback test.

One year and four days after I thought I understood the difference between pings and trackbacks, this short podcast shows me that I didn't.

Last night, I enjoyed a pleasant evening in this pub with a few friends. We watched a mediocre team in white draw with a mediocre team in orange and blue socks.

Beer arrived on a regular basis from the downstairs bar via the dumb waiter.

Inexplicably, towards the end of the evening, conversation turned to songs about the death of a father:-

• The Verve - Drugs Don't Work
• The Streets - Never Went To Church
• Mike And The Mechanics - The Living Years
• U2 - Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own
• Billy Bragg - Tank Park Salute

We finally left the pub and someone asked 'What are the chances of finding a curry house around here ?'. We looked across the street and our prayers were answered. Weird.

This beautiful photograph of a deserted station concourse captures an unusual sense of peaceful isolation and a rare moment of tranquillity at London Waterloo.

Yes. I missed the last train for the sake of a large bottle of Cobra but it was worth it.

I am working in Oxford and booked into this small hotel overnight. I arrived at 18.30 and rang the bell. No one is home.

I phoned the company who made the booking to get the phone number. They call the hotel on my behalf. Guess what. No one is home.

The helpful man from LateRooms asked if I could wait around in the cold for 30 minutes to 'see if someone turns up'.

I was convinced my ears had deceived me and asked him to repeat this suggestion. I politely decline his kind offer so he consults his supervisor and offers to find me another hotel.

I reply that I wouldn't trust him to tell me the time of day and hang up. I then drive aimlessly around Kidlington until I happen to locate the Holiday Inn. Thankfully, this hotel has a person manning reception and rooms available.

Later, the proprietor of the Happy Lodge calls me to explain the situation. Not to apologise but just to explain the situation.

When I made the booking, I indicated I would be arriving around 19.00 so that is when someone would have been around to greet me. So it was actually my fault all along. Of course, I see now. Everything is crystal clear. It was my mistake. How stupid of me.

The proprietor thinks I owe her an apology because she had to turn a couple away from booking the room allocated to me but now unexpectedly vacant at short notice.

I disagreed and politely suggested that maybe, just maybe, she might owe me an apology.

The lady disagreed but helpfully suggested that next time I stay at the Happy Lodge, I make an effort to arrive at the designated time and not half an hour earlier.

I count to two and half before exploding: 'Sorry but there will be no need for that because I will not be staying at the Happy Lodge. Not tonight. Not tomorrow. Not next week. Not ever'.

Bluehost have upgraded WordPress to 2.0.5 so I ignored this warning and clicked Upgrade

Click on Upgrade only if
- no files, languages, themes have been modified
- you haven't added mods to this installation of WordPress

After all, the whole point of hosting a blog is to add plugins and modify themes.

I find it slightly odd that Bluehost have no blog or other means of communicating the availability of these upgrades.

Let's see if posting still works.

I forgot to pack my WordPress hosted images when moving my blog. Thankfully, this isn't as important (or embarrassing) as carefully packing and then promptly forgetting your suitcase when attending a week long conference away from home.

However, thanks to the Google image archive, my photo blog has now been restored to its full glory.

Yesterday, I visited a customer in sunny Glasgow, near Scotland. This was very poor planning on my part. I really should have delayed this trip by 7 days which would have allowed me to gatecrash the Oracle blogger meet-up at UKOUG.

In addition, returning to Glasgow on Tuesday 21 November would have given me the opportunity to watch Celtic play United in a atmospheric Glasgow hostelry sharing a pint of 'heavy' with some friendly Scottish people.

Anyway, it's all about the customer so I flew up yesterday. As I landed, I saw a small charter plane on the runway, ferrying a group of Scottish Oracle bloggers to Birmingham. I knew it was a group of Oracle DBA's from the name of the airline.

When I arrived at the office, the client was having a theme week to coincide with 'I'm a (C-list) Celebrity. Get me out of here.' The lifts were out of action and you had to clamber up a large beanstalk to get to the meeting room on the fourth floor.

Scaling the beanstalk was quite a challenge and you had to acrobatically leap onto a slippery white pole before finally reaching the balcony. This task delayed the start of the architecture workshop by two hours but the view from the top was well worth it.

We then adjourned for a delightful lunch of widgety grubs, fish eyes and kangaroo testicles. Strange people, the Scots.