MonkeyDispenser

Last weekend I discovered a slow puncture in the rear tyre of my beloved SV650S, probably down to the piece of metal sticking in it. Financially it couldn’t really have picked a worse time to happen, but that’s the way these things often go. After finally working out where to get a new tyre (this is the first time I’ve had to do anything like this with a bike) and deciding that the front could do with replacing too I decided it would just be easier to remove the wheels and take them in to avoid the extra fitting cost and having to wait for longer while the tyres were fitted.

Somehow that simple job has turned in to a refurbishment of the front forks. I don’t know what happened last night, but I just couldn’t seem to stop undoing things and taking them off. I just hope my Haynes manual is as good at telling me how to put it back together. Maybe I should have read that bit first.

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You gotta love those Germans! On the other hand you gotta lose a little bit of that old ‘Nintendo can’t do anything wrong’ when they can’t supply enough Wiis for the Christmas after the one at which they released. And there was me thinking I wouldn’t bother last year but this year I’d be easily able to get one for the, ahem, kids. I thought, ahem, ‘the kids’ were going to be sorely disappointed this year.

But let’s just come back to the Germans. If you check out their Amazon site - amazon.de - you will see that they still have plenty in stock, or at least they did when I posted this. And it’s actually cheaper than the UK! And with the glorious European Union it’s no problem buying from Germany and getting it delivered to the UK! Believe it or not I only ordered this on Tuesday morning, and the DHL guy knocked on my door with the delivery this morning (Thursday - two days later). He laughed when I commented that this was quicker than a Royal Mail delivery from within the UK and then told me that DHL was a German company anyway.

It helps if you understand German, but I don’t and I didn’t end up ordering a new iron by accident. Just use the Google language tool if you get a little stuck, but as a rule it looks exactly like the Amazon you know and love. You can use your standard Amazon login details as well so it sorts most of the form-filling for you.

Obviously I tried it out when it arrived (don’t want ‘the kids’ getting disappointed on Christmas day) and it works fine. You get a German plug (same as the shaver plugs here) but it just needs an adapter plug or you can force it into the standard UK socket after putting something in the earth socket to open the safety hatches. I do not endorse such things unless you’re desperate.

Burn your house down or not be able to play the Wii? A difficult decision.

So, love your fellow German if only for the fact that apparently they don’t love the Wii (and you’ll hear no comments from me regarding sense of humour being an issue…)

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Hurrah! I managed to pass my bike test. Admittedly it took two attempts and I thought I’d blown it the second time too but luck, and a nice driving examiner, appeared to be on my side.

So all I need now is a bike. Assuming the weather holds out for a few more weeks I’ll be heading up to Edinburgh to pick it up soon. After that the world is my oyster. Well, perhaps not since it wouldn’t go down too well if I spent all my time out on the bike. It’s tough being a modern husband…

That was a joke, by the way. I wouldn’t swap any of them for the bike, tempting as it may be some days

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I had my first attempt at cutting with a live blade tonight. It certainly makes a change from swinging a big lump of metal around and having to stop it yourself without hitting anything. What was a surprise was just how easily a sharp blade will cut through something. Newbies like myself tend to use the blade like an axe, expecting resistance at the point the blade strikes the target. What actually happens is the blade slices clean through the mats with very little resistance at all, leaving you to try and stop it before it hits the floor or your foot! As you can see from the second shot, my end point is a little low…

My form doesn’t look too bad, which was another thing I found surprising, but it does need some work to come up to the standard of someone who has been practising for so long. Sensei Keith Rose, 5th Dan, demonstrates the right way to do it.

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A large group of us went across to Flamingo Land in North Yorkshire this Sunday for possibly the last summer activity this ’summer’. To say it has been a poor summer is a bit of an understatement considering the unprecedented flooding around the country. Ironically, now that we’re coming into autumn the weather has improved greatly and held out for us all day. There was even the danger of sun-burn in the morning!

I wouldn’t say Flamingo Land  is the best theme park in the country but when you have kids from age 1 to 5 it does well enough to entertain them. Good job really at £74 for a family of four! Once Holly is 2 years old that means we’ll have to get a family ticket plus another single ticket for £20. Ouch! Why does ‘family’ mean two parents and two children? I’m sure there’s cause for a legal challenge there…

It definitely helps to have other parents around when going somewhere like this. At least you can pool the children and give other adults the chance to go on some of the bigger rides. It is a bit like herding cats though.

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On Tuesday this week I passed my driving theory test. Not that I don’t already have a driving licence, I just don’t have a motorbike licence and that’s what I’ll be aiming for next month by taking a direct access course. In theory, by the end of the course I’ll have my full bike licence. It’s a good job I passed the theory test though; failing that after nearly 20 years of driving would just be embarrassing. The official test DVD (the one that costs 10 quid, not the freebie they send you when you book your test) is pretty much a collection of the actual questions you get on the test. The test certainly isn’t hard if you’ve been driving for a long time, but if you can’t afford to fail (like me!) then I recommend the DVD.

Things are moving along quite quickly. I already have my protective gear ready and I’m in the process of getting hold of a bike similar to the one pictured. It’s a funny position to be in; on one side are a group (the bikers) telling you it’s by far the most enjoyable way to travel and on the other side is another group (the non-bikers) telling you you’re more-or-less going to kill yourself. Hmmm…nervous now.

Also it’s an entirely selfish thing to do if you have a young family like myself, which probably doesn’t make me quite as excited as I would otherwise be. None-the-less I’ve been wanting to do this for years and I’m determined to see it through successfully.

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My youngest is now at the walking stage and recently won a whole batch of hair ties at a school fete. When I say won, she obviously received a little help from her brothers given that she is 1 year old and doesn’t quite understand the concept of gambling yet.

I know girls and boys are quite different, that’s fairly obvious and a biological necessary for the survival of the species, but it’s the small things that seem to be built in which always interest me. For instance, Holly already appears to like dressing up. Now that’s not unusual as her 6 year old brother does too - but his motives are very different. He dresses in superhero costumes so he can do a bit of harmless showing off whilst Holly just seems to like dressing up because it’s what girls do. It is a fairly normal girly trait but I didn’t expect to be able to see it before she was intellectually capable of understanding the concept, or before the peer pressure kicks in when they start full-time school.

Anyhow, I digress. The fact is it can be slightly eerie. She seems quite happy to have her hair dressed with these new ties, something the boys would never suffer until old enough to be reasoned with (not they they would have hair ties now, but there are entirely different reasons for that which involve their own reasoning over the difference between boys and girls). I have no real exposure to girls of this age, let alone raising them. I’m from an entirely boy family - except for my mother, obviously. Girls don’t seem to stay little for very long. Boys are eager to grow up just so they can do ’stuff’ and often talk about how they wish they were older. Girls just seem to do it while you’re not looking.

Seeing Holly with her hair tied is cute but spooky at the same time. I put a lot of it down to having read too much manga…

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Today my new Samsung 226BW arrived, which pretty much ends my spending on gadgets for the foreseeable future. Setting it up wasn’t quite as easy as I’d hoped since my video card (an ATI Mobility Radeon X1400) refused to provide it’s native resolution of 1680 x 1050 using an analog connection. After three hours I resorted to the digital connection and it worked first time.
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This is something I’m having a real problem with right now. For a while I go without television, or at least I think I do, and feel quite good about myself. Then I suddenly find myself sitting in-front of the tv one evening whilst trying to do some work on one of my projects. Inevitably I get next to nothing done and end up feeling more than a little frustrated with myself.

It’s not like I don’t have a lot of things to do. Since starting down the road towards Getting Things Done I have realised just how many things are on my list. That doesn’t worry me, which is how it should be, but when I waste an evening  without even realising it I end up frustrated and annoyed with myself. Both of these feelings are counter-productive.

So what should I do? Here are a couple of ideas I’ve had:
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I recently read a book entitled ‘Coach Yourself: It’s Your Life, What Are You Going to Do with It?‘ by Anthony Grant. It’s an interesting read, especially if you’re one of those people who, like me, always talks about making big changes in your life and never really gets around to it.

There’s a reason I never got around to it, I know that now. If you’d asked me then I would have talked about it not being the right time, it needed more thought or other complications in my life meant it was difficult for me to do something like that right now. The classic excuse was that I was just too busy. It’s not just me, I have heard this sort of excuse from colleagues time and time again. I think we all know it’s an excuse but we’re all playing the game to make ourselves feel better.
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