Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged

Found another program to add to my list of must see TV, though there were not that many clues out there that it is on at all. FX hide it away at 02.00 early Tuesday mornings and do not trail it at all, there is no obvious link on the main page of the FX UK website and the details are hidden away on page 2 of the links to the series they show.

But I can reveal all; ladies and gentlemen, I give you Penn and Teller:Bullshit! (coyly referred to in EPG as Bulls^^t, why do they do that? Does anyone reading 'Bulls^^t'? sound it out other than 'Bullshit' in their heads, can anyone even pronounce 'Bulls^^t'? So why is it thought to be so offensive to write it 'Bullshit'?!).

It's as if FX are embarrassed about having to show it at all, I know it's not mainstream programming, their presentation style is somewhat forthright and the content a little challenging, but FX couldn't bury it any more effectively and still actually show it! What can't understand is how they get these whack jobs to come on the program, one screwball recorded a piece to camera calling Penn Jillette fat; so just how bad do you want the verbal abuse to be.

It's not to everyone's taste given the content and their style, they may well only get to preach to the converted but if you might be interested then this weeks subjects are exorcism and immigration.

Finished the job on the brakes this afternoon. The n/s rotor and pad were scored in a similar fashion to the o/s, one ridge at the very inside of the diameter swept by the pad and the other about 6-7mm wide in the middle of the disc, both 1 - 1.5mm high, with matching profile in the pad where it no longer seems to touch the disc but must do in order to wear away the friction material. The discs and pads appear to be Renault OEM gear and I can't see why wear like this would occur? Anyway, job is now done and been for a little test drive, everything seems to work, no rattles or clunks, firm pedal, car stops and no bits left over!

I would just like to thank Jason at Brakes International for all the effort he put in this morning to ensure I had the parts today that I need for the Clio. That I have the parts is in no way thanks to UPS I must emphasise, they will still, eventually, drag their arse over here on Tuesday at which time I will take great pleasure in refusing delivery. So, I made my judgement of UPS yesterday, and might well continue to restate that judgement for sometime yet, how did it go again, smug, lying, incompetent, unprofessional, grasping, careless, twats; have I missed anything? So what of Brakes International? It would have been easy, on a bank holiday weekend for them just to keep their heads down, make soft noises about having done all they could and how they use a reputable company for deliveries, very sorry but it is what it is, after all I'm not going to be placing even hundreds of pounds of business with them and that would have been OK. But that's not what happened. Jason phoned contacts local to me this morning to find someone stocking the parts I need and even tried to arrange delivery, couldn't quite manage that over a bank holiday weekend, but I had just a 30 mile round trip to pick the parts up and Brakes International will probably end up losing money on the deal, will certainly lose money if they don't get the charge back from UPS. So thanks again to Jason, I will certainly be using them again for any parts they can supply but will have to ask if they can ship them via anyone other than UPS.

So if you are thinking of getting parts online, click on the logo at the top and give them a look.

or just delivering my stuff? Well I hope to get an answer to that question when I speak to Brakes International about a refund of the shipping costs for the rotors and pads for my Clio that I ordered yesterday, on a next day delivery basis. So now I will be without a car over the bank holiday weekend. The reason I ordered the parts from Brakes International was because they offered the parts a reasonable cost and next day delivery, also at reasonable cost, with what I thought to be a market leader, UPS. Now shit happens, we're all aware of that, but businesses get judged by how they deal with it, so how are we to judge UPS? The quaintly turd coloured van was seen leaving the village around midday which led me to ring Brakes for the tracking number for the package, ring UPS and they tell me it's not a valid number, ring back Brakes, they insist it is, ring UPS, oh, it is valid after all, they tell me it's on the van but coming back as packaging damaged. I pointed out that there was no card through the door and asked why I was not invited to inspect it? Er, don't know Guv was the answer but the operator on the phone would mail the depot and I would get a phone call within 60 mins. 70 mins later I'm back on the phone enquiring where my phone call is? It seems the request for a call back was not noted as urgent, so I would have only received a call back sometime within 24 hours. He would place the request again, marking it 'urgent'. I got a voice mail about 40 mins later advising that the request had been made and he would ring again. After another hour I ring again, the guy who left the first message has gone home, how pleasant for Mr Simon Fearn of UPS, I really hope you are enjoying your bank holiday weekend. So I now go through the whole rigmarole with another smug twat, from which I learn that the package is still at Tamworth, 80 miles from me, never been on a van anywhere near me, so, smug lying twats. It seems that the packaging is damaged but it never left the Tamworth hub and was waiting for repackaging, I enquired why this took a whole day and was offered the explanation that it was due to it arriving at Tamworth in the early hours of the morning(?!), when, presumably there was no one on shift capable of manipulating packing tape? Smug, lying, incompetent, twats. Why would you even admit to delaying a parcel by, as it turns out, four days because you don't have staff capable of wielding a roll of tape? Smug, lying, incompetent, unprofessional, twats. And they wouldn't deliver it tomorrow because it was not paid for Saturday service. Smug, lying, incompetent, unprofessional, grasping, twats.

So now I'm going to have to light up Brakes International, pointing out the reputational risk they incur by using smug, lying, incompetent, unprofessional, grasping, twats. I can't see that it's their fault, I'm sure they know how to pack their goods and if they didn't package this one correctly then the UPS pick up driver should not have accepted it on to the van, so I'm 99% sure the damage occurred due to UPS. So, smug, lying, incompetent, unprofessional, grasping, careless, twats.

Here is an interesting little blog with examples of all sorts of airbrushing and retouching foul ups.

http://www.photoshopdisasters.blogspot.com/

Well, having just watched his 'Live & Laughing' video on BBC iPlayer, I would estimate maybe 10% as funny as he seems to imagine he is. Maybe this is just him or just his stage persona but if I found myself as funny as he seems to find himself I would still be wearing nappies as I would be perpetually pissing myself. Maybe the tour was sponsored by Pampers? Some of his material is quite good but I really don't need him cueing me in on every gag with a gale of his own laughter. Maybe the audience get to charge him to come into the theatre to be entertained by Michael McIntyre; maybe I might go to one of his gigs after all?

Got my Clio back for the MOT a few days ago, it passed but had an advisory about the brake disc being scored. Both looked OK on the outside surface but when I had the o/s wheel off I found that the inside surface was a little odd, half the diameter of the area swept by the pad was fine but the inner half was corroded and about 2mm higher and the pad had a similar profile. The pad material hadn't broken down and I can't see why the pad didn't sweep away the corrosion on the inner part of the disc as it seems quite flakey. The car has never stood for any appreciable length of time for significant corrosion to build up. I have never seen a wear pattern like it and even though I haven't been into the n/s, looking across when I was under the car getting the o/s caliper off, the pattern looks the same over there. I don't know how the discs are manufactured and wondered if there was a problem with tempering? Pads and discs will be changed on the axle but can't see rhyme or reason for this wear and I'm not changing the calipers so I will be watching the wear on the new parts very carefully.

Better get the 'I told you so' bit out the way, Bopara is not, currently at least, an Test Match No. 3, I said so at the start of the season, sadly neither is Ian Bell, he has the technique to make him better suited to the position but is unable to apply it consistantly, but I still prefer him to Key or Shah. So the selectors have got a couple of things right, but it might be too late and what of Bopara now? Ideally I would like to see an in form Pieterson at three and Bopara no higher than four, but what we are looking at for the 5th Test is Bell, Trott and Collingwood at 3,4 & 5 which won't be causing a great loss of sleep in the Aussie camp, it starts to look a little better with Prior, Flintoff, Broad & Swann at 6,7,8 & 9, Anderson 10 and then it's between Panesar, Harmison and Onions for the last spot. I don't think you can play Broad and Harmison in the same team, they are too similar, they can both take wickets in the right circumstances but are both going to be expensive so unless the groundsman at The Oval is convinced there is going to be fairly outrageous pace and bounce Harmison sits this one out. Panesar's inclusion is also dependant on the opinion of the groundsman, it will need to be a bit of a burner to see Monty back as he's not in the best of form, though if the surface is offering help I still believe he will be able to use it.

Unless the pitch is going to offer a fair bit by way of spin, pretty much from the get go, I think the Aussies will do what they need to do to retain the Ashes, but I do hope that they don't bat us out of it over the first two days and spoil, for the viewing public, what could the climax to a very good series.

Is it just me or have the recent 'upgrades' to Firefox turned it into as unstable a piece of crap as anything MS might have produced? I'm running a couple of add ons, but nothing which hasn't worked very happily in the past and any incompatible ones get the heave-ho after upgrades are applied anyway. Crashes seem to occur far more regularly on 3.5.xx than they ever did on 3.0.xx and it's not just one the one machine, happens on my desktop as well, which has a slightly different set of add ons. Will be having a look elsewhere, Chrome, Safari or Opera unless Firefox regains it's usual stability very soon.

Now, as has been mentioned here before, I'm a grumpy bastard, I don't particularly rejoice in it, but I don't deny it either and the current leader in the places to make me grumpy is now The Cambridge Belfrey Hotel. The AA gave the group, Q Hotels, 'Hotel Group of the Year 2008/09' (how did they decide, there's still 5 months to go?) and this particular specimen 4 stars. Suffice to say I won't be letting the AA loose on my car anytime soon or I may well end up with the crankshaft being used as the rear axle. One of the minor quibbles is apparent as soon as you get there, it's the car park. Lots of shrubs and bits and bobs but all the turns are too tight and the back to back separation is too small. There are scuff marks, signalling damaged tyre walls and dinged up alloys all over the place, I have never seen anything like it, I'm sure the kerbs started off an attractive concrete beige but now they are mostly black. It's a minor quibble, I didn't do any damage but it was daylight and, unsurprisingly as it turns out, the car park was nearly empty. Now I'm not going to turnaround and drive off home in high dudgeon just because the architect who designed the car park was only there on work experience and had just come back from an extended liquid lunch when this plan was put together, and I didn't leave subsequently as we were there for my in-laws Diamond Wedding Anniversary lunch and didn't feel it was worth kicking over the traces but were this not the case I wouldn't have made it to the main course. Surly barman is unable to manage a bar with just the 11 of us in the party and two others in their bathrobes, presumably fresh from the spa which may be the deciding factor in getting 4 stars? It didn't take much to scratch away the superficial bonhomie, merely the presence of my rather doddery father in law failing to tot up the number of bottles of cider(no draught cider available) requiring said barman to make more than one trip to the chiller cabinet and coming up one short as he hadn't been restocking it. He said he would bring the missing one over, he didn't, when I prompted him for it he toddled off to get one and of course it was warm. Went we went in for the meal we were sat around a table barely three feet wide, festooned with two wine glasses apiece and no elbow or leg room. The 'starter' was a salad bar, that was the only choice, the in-laws asked if there was soup and the serving staff made considerable show of their reluctance to ask the kitchen staff if it would be possible to put a packet of nondescript Batchelor's powder into some boiling water. The main course was a carvery where the choice was between very rare beef or gammon. I wanted neither, which was just as well as the 'chef' (the guy doing the carving; not sure that qualifies as being a chef?) had fucked off never to be seen again. There was no vegetarian option so I had potatoes, roast were tasteless, boiled were hard and tasted of something, but not potato, some brown slightly salty gloop which I guessed passed for gravy and some broccoli. I would have had a couple of Yorkshire puddings but there were none left and no chef to get me any. All the sweets had been out, uncovered since we arrived and I didn't fancy wasp surprise along with the strawberry something which was there and the chocolate whatever it was I plumped for was brown and incredibly stodgy. The coffee was drinkable but only after addition of four sugars, I usually take one.

On the assumption that all the staff encountered are on minimum wage I don't blame them. Either the hotel, 4 stars don't forget, don't pay them enough to be even remotely invested in the establishment or they don't recruit effectively and then fail to train them. At least I wasn't paying and these problems won't be mine again as they would need to pay me to visit the place again.

...if you've heard this one before. The owner of the satellite rights to MLB and NHL have decided to buy up a chunk of the overpriced and overrated Premiership and now want me to subsidise their purchase. So just which part of the failed Setanta model did ESPN not understand? I already, reluctantly, pay a wedge to the Premiership via Sky Sports, for which I also get Test Match and other forms of cricket, Superleague, NFL, Rugby Union, some tennis, La Liga and many other bits and pieces and will not be paying ESPN for just the Premiership. I like their coverage of US sport, they are unquestionably the best in the business, and if anyone accuses me of cutting off my nose to spite my face, well that might be true but I will be looking to MLB TV and Centre Ice for my baseball and ice hockey before stumping up the additional £9 per month for ESPN's output. Once again it seems that US sports fans in this country are getting the shaft on the altar of Premiership football.

Now I'm the first to jump on people/organisations who don't offer the service that I feel it is reasonable to expect, so it's only fair to highlight it when they do. In this case it is DAB radio manufacturers Pure, I had a Chronos alarm clock, which was very nice, DAB radio of course, 4 alarms, configurable for weekdays or weekends only, (though not both strangely), overall a very nice piece of kit. At least it was until is intermittently started trying to wake me up with the sound muted, this did not work very effectively and fortunately never happened when I needed to be anywhere. The Chronos had a two year guarantee but I couldn't find the receipt, nevertheless Pure had me send it back to them without any quibble other than a little prod via email, and have now sent me back a nice new Chronos II with just a week's turnaround time. Version II now has USB flash upgrade capability, automatically variable display brightness, headphone socket and low power stand by mode. Sweet. The box didn't include a USB cable though but shouldn't be a problem as it looks a fairly standard socket.