You spend 3 months watching your WordPress statistics bumbling along the horizontal axis close to zero. Some traffic dribbles in. The graph accelerates into 10’s of hits daily. You feel better. You will persist with this blogging experiment for a little longer. At this rate, it may soon be time to consider a proper blog using WordPress.org and Adsense to make the millions that eluded me during the dot com boom. ...
You can save lots of time and get even more things done by checking in online for your flight at www.britishairways.com. You can even change your allocated seat (sometimes) which is useful as BA will always allocate an aisle seat if your preference is window and vice-versa. Version 2.0 of the BA site (June 2006) will even include a brief description of your prospective neighbour in order to help you with this difficult choice. ...
I just think everyone’s out to get me. Search Term: +“Norman Brightside”+“Blog” Please, please don’t let it be the BAA security staff from T4.
Agency: London Rubber Company Location: Heathrow T4 toilets. Durex Featherlite Durex Ribbed for Extra Sensitivity Durex Extra Safe Durex Gossamer Durex Lager & Lime Durex Chicken Korma Nurofen Obviously two of the above are fictitious but the Nurofen is genuine. A great idea to counter that age old objection - ‘Not tonight dear, I have a splitting headache’. [ This blog is brought to you by Tom Hanks who actually has lived unnoticed in Heathrow Terminal 4 for the past 8 years, sleeping on chairs by night and queuing in various parts of the building by day. ] ...
People never ask me ‘Just who is this Norman Brightside character ?’ ‘Norman Brightside’ is an alias for a fictitious Oracle Database Administrator based in Solihull, near England. Norman briefly flirted with celebrity, last year, when he had the temerity to criticise Tom Kyte. Norman Brightside is also a bastardisation of Norman Whiteside, a Northern Irish footballer who played for Manchester United in the 80’s and the song ‘Mr. Brightside’ by the popular American beat combo - The Killers. ...
This morning at some unearthly hour, I found myself standing once again in the queue to clear security at Heathrow Terminal 4. I was almost at the X-ray machine when a member of staff approached me and invited me to ‘volunteer’ for a full body scan. He took me behind some screens and for one moment I feared the BAA queue monitors were going to exact their terrible revenge for my outspoken criticisms last week. However, he explained that the body scanner would take three scans of my body, each of which would pass a small amount of radiation through my body. ...
‘Would you like any cashback today at all, Sir ?’ ‘Oh yeah. That would be handy. £50 - thanks.’ ‘Oh I’m awfully sorry. I haven’t got enough money in the till to give you £50, Sir.’ ‘Oh OK - how about £30 then ?’ [Looks dolefully into depths of till] ‘Hmm - not really. That would leave me a little short of cash.’ ‘Can you manage £20 ?’ ‘Yeah, yeah. £20. I can give you £20.’ ...
Two years ago, my hard disk failed. Completely. This was excellent news as my computer ran a lot faster after a clean installation of Windows XP but bad news because I lost email, names and addresses, documents etc. One thing on my to-do list was to investigate offline storage to backup key data files to avoid a repetition. And, yes, this ‘Next Action’ had been on the to-do list for two years. ...
The first in an occasional series. No. 1 - O’Reilly’s in Brussels. Difficult to find, particularly if you hold the street map upside down and wander aimlessly down dark, empty streets and end up in Schaerbeek. Easy to find if you hold the map the right way up. Stella - 4 Euro per pint. Lively pub. One big screen and several small screens dotted around. Plenty of seating available. Blackburn 1 - MUFC 1 (Carling Cup Semi Final). Two superb goals. One melee involving Rooney. ...
On Wednesday, I found myself patiently waiting in a queue, talking with a nice lady from Toronto, to get through airport security at Heathrow Terminal 4. Nothing unusual there. Although, for someone from London to exchange pleasantries with a complete stranger is a little unusual (but she started it). However, on this occasion, only two X-ray machines were in use so the queue was a little longer than usual and slowly and relentlessly growing in length. ...