…about the art of freezer repairs, and surely it must be an art because, in my humble and ill informed judgement, it isn’t fucking rocket science. Over three weeks ago our expensive John Lewis freezer developed a problem, the temperature started dropping from the set value of -18C up to -7C, then back down to -14C and continued to fluctuate. Rang to ask for repairs fairly late Friday evening, no one could help until Saturday morning, rang Saturday morning no one able to come out until following Thursday, told them that there is every chance that all the contents of the freezer would be spoilt by then, not bothered, not their problem need to speak to someone else about that, which is another story. Freezer repair artisan duly arrives and pronounces that the compressor is screwed. No shit Sherlock, just how many moving parts are there to a freezer? My estimate of one was close but no cigar. So does freezer repair artisan bring with him, knowing the make and model of freezer in advance of making the visit, a compressor? No. In fact it will have to be ordered, it will take at least a week. Get a phone call at the beginning of last week, got the compressor can come out Thursday, that’s the only day that week it could be done, can’t do that, everyone this end working so the visit made today when freezer repair artisan announces that the problem actually lies with the only other moving part, the fan?!? It’s probably fortunate that I was not here to discuss the diagnostic capabilities of said freezer repair artisan or the lack of stores capacity than means that the only two moving parts in a freezer are not available to effect repairs in a single visit. Fan will have to be ordered, will take a week.

I have plotted the growth rate at which people are turning down the England manager job, clearly and understandably spooked by having to follow the legendary Minardi, and it would appear that the media will enquire if I am prepared to take on the job at 3.43 a.m. on 29th November. I’ve set my alarm to be ready to take the call, I should be number 34,623,841 on the list of prospective candidates, just after Wee Jimmy Krankie but ahead of Roger De Courcy’s Nookie Bear. Sadly I will have to decline due to my commitment to my present role, unless the contract includes a £2.5m ‘Golden Fuck Off’ clause in the event of manifest incompetence and demonstrable unsuitability for the job from the get go; much like the last contract the F.A. signed for it’s last manager come to think of it. Maybe I should reconsider.

Time’s up. McLaren watch 0 mins. Goodnight and good luck in your new job, wherever it maybe.

Does anyone have the answer to the question I first thought of; was this data encrypted and if so what was the strength? The next questions are ‘why send it in this form?’, ‘was the method of carriage within procedure?’ and each of these suggest other questions. Doesn’t H.M. Govt. have a data network, two CDs would be about 1.4Gb transfer which would take about 5 minutes over my broadband, maybe they consider the post more secure than their networks? I haven’t heard definitively if it was sent via an internal mail system or via Royal Mail, both have been suggested. Whichever it was sent by, was this an authorised form of data transfer, if so then the primary responsibility could rest at a very low level, however the secondary responsibility lies with whoever drew up the data handling procedures. This is someone we have yet to hear from, if only by way of resignation. I understand that the data was going to the National Audit Office, why do they need access to such raw data, did they request it on CD? What powers does the guardian of the Data Protection Act, the Information Commissioner, have when H.M. Govt. data and processes are questioned?

There would seem to be insufficient data on these discs to pose a huge threat, even if unencrypted, providing both ends, the individual and their bankers, are on the ball. Further detail would need to be teased out of one or other to have enough to perpetrate identity theft. No one with a legitimate query will ever ask for full password and security details over the phone, not the banks, the police, credit card companies, finance houses, nobody. If any one does it is almost certainly an attempt at fraud and you should just put the phone down or ask for a name and where they work and ring them back using a number established from a source other than the caller.

Of course none of this detracts from the fact that it’s a complete fiasco. SNAFU.

as long as your name is Alex Rodriguez. What sort of parallel universe have we been transported to where A-Rod is back with the Yankees? After pissing off the two MLB teams with deepest pockets, the Yankees by opting out of his Tom Hicks inspired contract that would have seen the Yankees picking up $21m from the Rangers if A-Rod had agreed an extension and the Red Sox by letting his motor mouth agent Scott Boras announce the opt out during the World Series, it seems he is heading back to The Bronx? It’s only a matter of weeks since his departure amidst phrases such as ‘clubhouse cancer’ and ‘post season choker’ and now he’s going to be paid an average of $27.5m per year until age 42 by that self same team. Maybe it was another phrase that cropped up at the time that scared the big bucks out of Steinbrenner pockets; ‘transition team’? This was a premature assessment of the Yankees for 2008, there were still too many decisions to be made, would Pettite be back, Hunter into Centre Field, Lowell at 1st/3rd base? And there is still trade bait available without touching the Holy Trinity of Chamberlain, Hughes and Kennedy. Certainly Pettite looks key to the rotation but if they get him back then maybe they will look at a six man rotation to protect two old arms, Pettite and Mussina, and three young arms, Chamberlain, Hughes and Kennedy, plus Wang? Probably not, but that looks like a serviceable five man rotation, with one in the bullpen. The hitting doesn’t look that shoddy either, Jeter, Abreu, Cano, Cabrera, Matsui and Giambi and if you add Torii Hunter to the lineup then I wouldn’t classify it as a team in transition but one that ought to get to the post season with a cardboard cut-out standing at 3rd. We know why Rodriguez is back with the Yankees, but why do they want him back?

How could the Israelis do this to us? The spiteful bastards, this is payback for all those UN votes where we sided with the Arab countries. I had, if not joyfully at least resignedly, consigned England’s Euro 2008 qualification prospects to the crapper, like a fairground goldfish, along with the clueless Steve Minardi’s international management career only to have Israel slap on the defibrillator and jolt both back to life for at least the next four days.

So on the day that the Scot’s got the bum’s rush from Italy after a campaign marked by spirit, pride and tenacity, England, who have shown vanishingly little of any of these traits, are given a lifeline. The Scot’s deserved a far better return on the commitment shown, top to bottom, players, managers and even the SPL postponing the ‘Old Firm’ game last weekend; was there ever any prospect of the money grubbing Premiership showing similar support for the cause of England’s campaign? So in a game for all the marbles we will be without Owen, as a consequence of a meaningless friendly, and Rooney and need to obtain a home draw against an already qualified Croatia; this will not be an uplifting experience, whatever the result. Still, if this feat cannot be achieved then Minardi has to be toast doesn’t he? Please, pretty please.

McLaren watch remains 90 mins.

and the fire now seems to be well and truly alight under Barry Bonds as he is indicted for perjury and obstruction of justice, charged with lying when he told a federal grand jury that he did not knowingly use performance-enhancing drugs. Whilst it makes Bonds untouchable when it comes to signing a new contract for next year, if he is innocent he should welcome this as an opportunity to put the allegations to bed once and for all and legitimise the records he now holds, somehow I suspect this won’t be the way he sees it. Whilst Major League Baseball won’t relish the prospect of seeing the ‘Home Run King’ in court there has to be some sort of catharsis to this yet with the Mitchell Report due in soon the credibility of former Senator Mitchell’s whole report will be cast into doubt unless he has managed to finger Bonds also.

Is it me or is science getting a little scary right now or am I being a wimp (not a Weakly Interacting Massive Particle)? The LHC (Large Hadron Collider) should be fired up in the next couple of weeks and could bring the universe to an end in a blizzard of micro black holes, but probably won’t, still, if it does we’ll all have the satisfaction of knowing that it was Switzerland that went first (how’s your choice of new domicile looking now Lewis Hamilton??). The LHC could answer a number of fundamental questions, does the Higgs Boson/Higgs Field exist, can String Theory be put to bed, is Loop Quantum Gravity a better basis for future research, what happened to all the antimatter created during the Big Bang, what is Dark Matter? If all these questions are answered, will all the physicists switch it off again, pack up their bags and head home? Probably not. One thing they may not have considered; what will they do if, when they switch on the particle beams, the 800 million proton-proton collisions per second spell out ‘42’ in the bubble chamber?

Now I’m not likely to get a particle accelerator anytime soon so how about a new computer, a quantum computer? Well at least it won’t run Windows, but do I really want one? I’ve heard some really weird things about the capabilities of these things if anticipated future development of them takes place, mostly that a 300 bit version would be capable of processing more data than there are atoms in the universe. Maybe my hearing is going? It was postulated therefore that part of the computing process must take place in a parallel universe, so are we now looking at an extra universal invasion, you know how pissed folks get when you steal their leccy. So, on the whole, it might be best if the LHC toasts the universe before ET comes looking for us with a humungous electricity bill.

Whilst I can’t criticise Steven Gerrard for supporting Steve Minardi it’s hard to see the basis for his support. The England manager has one overarching responsibility, qualify for European Championships and World Cups, that’s it, that’s the measure and we’ve gone from, in some peoples view, potential World Cup winners 18 months ago to failing to qualify, in all likelihood, for Euro 2008. The squad is substantially the same as Eriksson took to Germany with the addition of one or two players such as Richards and Barry, the squad has not been ‘devastated’ by injuries, there have certainly been injuries but this is part and parcel of the game, it always has been and always will be as long as the game is played.

Is it time to lower our expectations, are England no longer to be thought of as a team that is expected to appear in the two major tournaments? I don’t believe so, however if we miss out on Euro 2008 and Minardi is retained then this perception could well be his legacy.

Many years ago during my brief time at Aston University, 1977 I believe, I had the opportunity to see Gordon Giltrap in concert whilst he was touring and promoting Perilous Journey. I didn’t go, something else must have been happening which was very important and I still regret not going. I have three of his albums from that time, the aforementioned Perilous Journey, his previous album, Visionary, and subsequent album, Fear of the Dark. Perilous Journey and Fear of the Dark are just about my most prized pieces of vinyl. The man is a genius. After Fear of the Dark he moved in a different direction and I lost a little interest in the aural aspect of his music. So why do I still regard him as a genius if he’s no longer producing music I like? Well he still does to a certain extent, but not many tracks that hold my attention to the same degree that any of those on Perilous Journey and Fear of the Dark do. No one would call me at all musical, I don’t play any instrument and never have, my brief flirtation with a recorder when I was nine can safely be ignored, so maybe I’m not qualified to judge but I could just watch this guy play. It seems to be some sort of thrash acoustic style but with none of the imprecision implied by the ‘thrash’ epithet. He’s best known for Heartsong, released as a single and used by the BBC as intro music for it’s Holiday program long ago but there were many other outstanding tracks on the three albums, The Deserter, Fast Approaching, Lucifer’s Cage etc.

I saw a post on someone’s blog for ZZ Top’s ‘Legs’ with a You Tube link (I did go and see ZZ Top, they were good but brief, only did about 40 minutes) and I remembered I had seen something of Gordon Giltrap on there also, so here he is.

I live near enough to London to go to the 2012 Olympics and hope to attend, I have little doubt that it will be a great event and will benefit the whole of the country, not all parts equally I grant you, and when it was announced that we had been successful with the bid, it’s one of the few events that I can pinpoint exactly where I was (A1 southbound, 1st lay by south of A1/M62 junction, before they opened the new layout) but I must admit to being underwhelmed by the design and overwhelmed by the £500m (minimum) price tag. As I understand it by the end of September 2012, or whenever the partial dismantling is complete, what will be left is a 25000 seat regional stadium, which, if constructed from scratch would have cost in the order of £100-150m, so for the four week or so rental of 55000 seats the cost is £350m. So let’s make a few very rough and ready comparisons; Petco Park, San Diego (another HOK Sport project) 42500 fixed seats, as with all baseball parks many of these are in suites which will reduce capacity compared to the 2012 Stadium and there is also considerable office space within the stadia, opened 2004, cost $348m; PNC Park, Pittsburgh, 38500 seats, opened 2001, cost $218m; Comerica Park, Detroit, 40000 seats, opened 2000, cost $300m. The most expensive of these permanent facilities, in per bum on seat terms, is approx. £4000, the four week rental of these 55000 seats is over £6000 on today’s estimates. Such comparisons are somewhat invidious but are construction, land, labour and material costs really so much more expensive here than in the U.S?

To me this does not look like value for money and the danger is that the venue for track and field will suck up a vast proportion of the available funding and the venues for the many other sports which will be hosted will suffer by comparison.