BigMouth

I must admit that I had become so frustrated by the lack of SIC action over the matter that I had come up with a cunning plan. I intended to register a domain name and rent some web space that would allow me to draw a map of Lerwick by hand and show photographs of the quality of dog turds on these particular streets. Only streets with dog turds would appear on the map. The website would be very much aimed at the tourist market. Chances are that there would be some action then! Anecdote: I worked for a company where one of the employees invented a system. An operator rode a quad bike which was fitted with a Numatic carpet cleaner. This machine was of the pressure and extraction variety. The spray tank was full of something that broke down the dog turd and allowed it to be sucked up the nozzle of the vacuum. It sounds horrendous, but it worked and he started to market it to local councils. Where his plan went awry was the naming of the machine. The Ride On Vehicle Excrement Remover - or ROVER for short. Needless to say the motoring giant got to hear of this and told him to stop using their name.

What is on the Windozzzze box? XP / 2K / Some other flavour of crashing OS?

Better still, just return it through their letter box.

These sort of issues are sorted out with a pen and a calendar. A monthly check is all that is required. Why not have a backup system too. What happens for instance if the fuel pipe became blocked to the boiler? If it is important it needs a little more attention. I used to have a friend who never bothered to put fuel in her car. It was her husband's job as far she was concerned. When she ran out on the motorway she realised the value of self-reliance. Commonsense is what is lacking in this story.

There is going to be terrible carnage if this weather keeps up. Piles of dead smokers who have all succumbed to hypothermia blocking up the pavements. Look on the bright side though, another sexual opportunity!

It is far easier to rely on others than to be self-reliant!

In one of the supermarkets some of the staff look worn down by life, whereas in the other they mostly look 12

I used to run a pub on top of a windswept hill. The pub was called the Cat and Fiddle. The pub sign swung in the wind and rain all year round and looked the worse for wear so I asked the signwriter to come and repaint it. He could only get to it at a time that I was unable to be there but he was known for his skill so I felt happy to leave him. When I got back from town he had done the job and left. I looked up at the sign and was horrified by the job that he had done so I rang him up and said the following: - The spaces between Cat and AND and AND and Fiddle are far too big.

I keep thinking about which sweets to buy. When you eat a sweet what is the first thing that you think? 1). mmm, that tastes really handmade? 2). mmm, that tastes really good Do people really give a toss whether something was made by hand when it is as cheap and easily disposable as a sweet? We are talking fudge and chocolates here, not bloody Morgan motor cars.

How can you have the word AND five times consecutively in a sentence and the sentence still make sense and be grammatically correct?

Just be careful about switching off firewalls on the inside (your network) if you haven't got the firewall switched to on on the router.

Its a doddle. Just make sure that you use TCP/IP How many PCs/Macs? Is it peer to peer or are you having a server? Look here http://www.mac-connect.com/

I will add that to my list of compliments that I have received today. ....just having a quick count up ..... .....er......... that will be one then!

McAfee can be a nightmare to completely get rid of. For PCs I would vote for AVG. I even bought the paid up version. Two years for £30 I think. For Macs you can get ClamAV

If you have a Mac you should be using Camino. All of the advantages of Firefox wthout the drawbacks

I started with a ZX81. When you finished typing an A4 page of code from a magazine and the 16k RAM pack attached to the back wobbled and you lost everything it would wear thin. Then came the Vic20, Dragon32, Spectrum 48k and 128k, then a couple of Sinclair QLs. Eventually I got an Osborne 1 and a daisy wheel printer which took 3 minutes to print a page of A4. Eventually I got a PC and spent the next few years trying to keep mine working. Then I looked after a couple of networks of them. It was always a thankless task and something that I am glad I don't do any more. I used to keep a Mac Classic as a door stop, but I recently bought myself a Mac Powerbook. When I visit my girlfriend she boots up her PC and there is always some drama. Spell check not working, no connection to the internet, crashing applications and a myriad of other problems. I haven't tried to sell her the Mac idea, but she sees how I just sit down and work whilst she spends and hour trying to get it working first. If it wasn't for the difficulties getting her software in Universal Binary flavour she would have a Mac now. I wouldn't go back to PCs. I have tried many OS', every flavour of Windows since 3.1, Linux, SunSolaris, RISCOS and various portable devices, but the Mac has without doubt been best. It just works. I have always been willing to help PC users out with their problems, but it started taking over my life so I wont touch them now.

There is always NeoOffice for the Mac

Somerfield - for the broken biscuits. I don't think that they are supposed to be broken but when the shelf stackers drop them from waist height that tends to be what happens. I suppose that if you pay minimum wage you can't expect much more.

I hate cats too. Every cat in Shetland turds in my garden. Sometimes I can't see out of the window for feces and I live on the third floor!

Over 100mph on a Honda Goldwing with my feet up on the cruiser boards with the stereo turned up full, passing a couple of fully colour co-ordinated leathered up poseurs crouched over in some sort of racing pose on their GSXRs, whilst griining stupidly at them. Of course when I got to the next roundabout I wobbled around it due to the blancmange suspension, whilst they blatted past. Almost 80 mph in a Skoda! 60 mph in second gear for about 50 miles in a company car when the salesman, whose car it was, told me to take care of it. You don't half get some funny looks on the motorway when you are revving the nuts off it. I drove it for the entire 200 mile journey mostly around the ouskirts of London without using the clutch once, then before giving it back to him I raced it back and forth through the muddiest lay-by you have ever seen.

Does every house in Lerwick have a pack of dogs? There are such huge piles of dog turd on the street of Lerwick now that it is likely that they will have to be picked up on bulk rubbish day. Sometimes the piles are so big I have to step out into the road to walk around them. Isn't this something that the Neighbourhood Support people are supposed to be tackling? They are supposed to be fining owners who let there animals crap in the street and don't pick up after them. I am personally looking forward to the Neighbourhood Support lot getting there teeth into dog excrement.

The Shetland Times Makes Me Sick I think that it is the colours - hopefully they will teach their new apprentice the meaning in the printing trade of the word registration - correctly align the (C M Y K) colours - all of them.

How about KKK headdress? Bwah ha ha ha

When people have been up to visit me they think that SIBC is some sort of wind up. I think that it must be the bouts of amnesia in amongst the news reading, the paper shuffling, the in depth to the point of minutiae reporting, the refusal to use abbreviations once you have given the full version of the company's name, the productive coughing, crashing vocals to make the news fit in at the right time. The x oclock news starting 2 minutes late, i.e. the wrong time. You can't knock the music though, (theres not enough rock though) its so much better that that diddle-e-dee sharn at 7 oclock on Radio Shetland/Scotland. Then again, when the girlfriend makes me dinner I always compliment her on the yoghurts at the end rather than the meal. Worst of all was one of the taxi adverts, the friendly local taxi company one. My son was convinced that it had been recorded by someone with a microphone in one hand and a blood-stained axe in the other.

Sack the ferry crews and build a large catapult then see who REALLY needs to come across. Mind out for the off course flying Ford Cortinas landing in the Peerie Shop window.