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Since accumulating 9 penalty points, Norma has been very worried about the possible consequences of my irresponsible actions and dangerous driving. A driving ban would have severe, wide reaching consequences for my glamorous job in IT consultancy, affect our busy social life not to mention the logistics of ferrying the kids to all their hobbies. After lodging an appeal with Surrey Traffic Police, I gleefully accepted a place on a half-day ‘Speed Awareness Workshop’. Attendance at the workshop cost £95 but was in lieu of the proposed 3 point penalty so was well worth the money. Plus the instructor was an attractive lady. After registration, coffee and friendly introductions, we all swapped amusing anecdotes of our various speeding offences, recounted hard luck stories and were tested on stopping distances in the rain. ...

Blue Balloon You saw me standing alone All those balloons in front of Joe Hart Without a red balloon of my own Blue Balloon You know just what I was there for You heard Michael Ball saying a prayer for A FA Cup medal he really could care for And then a ball suddenly appeared before me The only one my feet will miss I heard somebody scream please puncture me But when I looked to the ref it was in the goal ...

Joomla! 1.5 has been released and installed over here. Drupal 6 hasn’t been released but that didn’t stop me upgrading this blog to 6 RC2. I never thought I would say this but I think I am starting to get Twitter. Blame Tim Hall. FTP - Siebel had an FTP site for exchanging files with customers. Oracle has an FTP site for exchanging files with customers. Unsurprisingly, Oracle are standardising on the latter. I simply can’t believe how much time I have wasted spent helping intelligent people crossing this chasm. The Europa Hotel in Belfast was the ‘most bombed hotel in Europe.’

Last Thursday, 152 people (16 crew and 136 passengers), in addition to a significant number of people living in Hounslow, narrowly escaped death when a British Airways flight from Beijing (BA038) was forced into an emergency landing at Heathrow airport. Several things struck me about this incident and the aftermath: After a phone call to update me on all the domestic news and gossip, my wife somehow negated to impart this tidbit of useful and relevant information. I hung up and turned on the TV news to be staggered by images of the wrecked fuselage of a British Airways jumbo jet lying of the fringes of the runway, 15 miles from my house, surrounded by foam, slides deployed with 18 fire appliances surrounding the scene. As I was flying from Belfast into Heathrow the following day, I consulted the BMI website which curiously maintained flights would be subject to delays and cancellation following, in a slight understatement, the ‘incident at Heathrow’. Funnily, enough, the AAIB agrees with me and defines an accident as ‘an occurrence during the period of operation of an aircraft where the aircraft incurs damage’. A man from Oxford who walked away with his life would have quite liked British Airways to provide him with a cup of tea followed by some counselling. Another couple thought they had just had ‘a bumpy landing’ and therefore didn’t require any tea and biscuits. In fact, these Aussie backpackers were just delighted to get their baggage back without queuing at the carousel and to receive a complimentary return ticket for the Heathrow Express. A surreal moment boarding the flight at Belfast, picking up a newspaper with the stricken 777 plastered all over the front page. British Airways’ decision to parade the pilot, co-pilot and Julie, your cabin service director, before the world’s press. The BA crew all looked shell-shocked and distinctly uncomfortable. Mind you, so would I, if I was slowly starting to assimilate the events and trying to recover from a near death experience (without a cup of tea). This implied to me that BA were either very keen to get the media off their backs and leave them alone and/or BA are already absolutely certain of the circumstances of the accident and knew for a fact, pilot error was not a possible contributory factor. Finally, I must confess that I know absolutely nothing about airplanes, fly by wire or wind shear. I am also totally ignorant of the size of the pigeon population of South West London and possible deficiencies in the quality of Chinese aircraft fuel. ...