Monday morning
by
, 24th-September-2007 at 12:09 PM (2060 Views)
Aha the start of another wonderful week. [url=http://www.rightmove.co.uk/viewdetails-17223635.rsp?pa_n=5&tr_t=buy]Our house is on the market[/url], so someone please buy it. Theres a lot of tidying to be done when you try to sell your house. We'll miss it, we've been here 5 years but the new one is bigger and better located. 5mins from park, train station, town centre and school.
When we were tidying I came across some receipts for unclaimed expenses from 2001. About 150 pounds worth. Not in itself very interesting, but being a disorganised sort i had tried to improve my "paperwork turnaround" by reading a book on time management. The expenses were inside said book, where they remained for the next 6 years. Oh well. Too late to claim them now. :)
[b]the credit card story [/b]
An interesting thing happened to me at the weekend. I went to get petrol after my daughters mini-gym. Now I normally use my debit card quite a lot so that it's generally loose in my pocket rather than living in the wallet as I would need to take out each time.
So at the checkout I pulled it out to pay and typed in the PIN. Invalid pin. Oops. Try again. Very careful. Invalid pin.
Hmm, I know its correct. "The machine's saying invalid pin" I proclaimed to the BP counter woman. "The keys sometimes stick" she replies, as the queue builds behind me. "Try again". I try again. "Last Try" the machine says to me. Invalid pin. Oops. "Thats it this time" says counter woman. "Err?" says I. I think to myself "Well fair enough, they've got my card details so its not as if I'm not paying despite the invalid pin.". I get the receipt and leave.
So I go home. Tell my wife the story, with the moral of "you don't need to know your pin anymore". I then have a look at the card I used. It is NOT my bank card. It was a mastercard I'd found in another pair of trousers. So my pin was correct when I typed it in, for the er...other card, that was, for a change, in my wallet.
Oops.
And then I thought. What sort of security is there where I can use any card, fail to guess the pin and still make the purchase with no questions asked. Hmm. Maybe I should inform mastercard, I'm sure they'd be miffed. :)
[b]X-Factor[/b]
X-Factor is probably one of the few programs I actually watch, fairly regularly on TV. Its good to see talented singers. What's not so good, and is getting increasingly annoying, is the set-up element of it all. You know, the pre-judging interview where the person says "my father was a peace protester/environmental supporter and aid worker, who, whilst out carrying a 400lb rucksack of food to a remote village of cripples in some African back-of-beyond, stepped on a land mine. All that was left of him, fluttering down from above with singed edges, was the x-factor application form." etc.. so thats why I'm here. Strangely, the car crash tv that would happen if they subsequently sang like a cat with a hairball, never happens. They are always very good. Which just goes to show, if you have had a personal tragedy in your life, you naturally become more talented as a result. Or maybe it's careful editing. You decide.
Oh yeah, and the multiple, repeat, gratuitous showing of the same inane clips of bad/mad/sad entrants before and after every break - really does my head in something terrible.
At least with the "boot camp" part of the show the "really should not be there" ...er.."singers" are thinned out somewhat.
--- should I blog more ? answers on the back of an authentic moulded smurf ----