Author Archives: David Hollingworth

Life Begins At – 60!

It’s been such a long, long time since I posted here and a lot of water has flowed under the proverbial bridge since then. Recently I’ve been looking for a good excuse to start posting again and I can’t think of a better reason that celebrating my 60th birthday.

The expression goes that life begins at 40 and I guess there’s a certain amount of truth in this. Certainly a lot has happened since my 40th birthday; got married to my fabulous wife, raised a wonderful, strong daughter who has recently flown the nest, moved county (twice) and a whole lot more.  But turning 60 is like opening a brand new volume in the saga with so many new challenges becoming. What better reason to reinvigorate the blog?

QPad MK-85 Keyboard

QPad MK-85 First Impressions

I’m typing this on my new QPad MK-85 keyboard. It’s not that I’m into PC gaming that I bought this; but I spend so much time on the keyboard that I wanted a decent tool for the job. So far it’s been great – the keyboard is very heavy for a keyboard, rock solid construction, and the keys are lovely to type on. Shame it doesn’t correct the spelling for me too.

Here’s a pic. Oh, did I forget to mention it glows in the dark 🙂

QPad MK-85 Keyboard

Caterham in the snow 1963

Caterham In The Snow 1963

I recently moved my blog to a new hosting provider and for some reason this post didn’t come across. So for posterity sake here are a couple of pictures taken of our house on Stanstead Road, Caterham, Surrey, UK during the severe winter of 1963. I would have been 7 years old and remember it reasonably well.

Caterham in the snow 1963

 

Caterham in the snow 1963

 

Moving On

This is not an easy post to write.

For the last 14 months I’ve been running my own business, Computer Troubleshooters – West Cork. Unfortunately, despite all my best efforts, this simply isn’t paying the bills, let alone putting food on the table. So I’ve decided to wind the company up and look for a fulltime position again.

For me this is a bit like trying to change gear in the middle of taking a sharp corner rather too fast. Life is lurching rapidly towards the curb whilst I’m struggling to keep it under control, not really sure in which direction I’m headed.

One thing I’m hoping is that this post will allow me to transition out of Computer Troubleshooters mode and back into “prospective employee” mode.

At least I should have more time for posting to this blog 🙂

PS. The business is for sale if you’re interested. It’s a franchise business and you’d get it at a fraction of the cost of setting up from scratch. Drop me a line if you’re interested.

Why I Hate DIY

There’s an age old adage that you’re probably familiar with:

Measure twice – cut once.

Well for me it goes more like:

Measure twice – cut three or four times, measure it again and cut a couple times more.

I don’t know what it is; but I just can’t seem to get the measurements right. Take this afternoon for example. All I had to do was put two hooks on the back of the bathroom door to hang a bathroom “tidy” on.

Two hooks, same height up the door. Easy!

So I put the two hooks up, hung the tidy on it, stood back; goddammit it’s crooked. Had reposition one on the hooks to get it level.

Me and DIY don’t mix.

Review: Dyson DC23 – A Great Vacuum Cleaner

Up until now we’ve used a Miele S718 vacuum cleaner to quite good effect; but since we got a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel last year it was obvious that the Miele was struggling to pick up the pet hair off the carpet.

By the way these dogs are described as “moderate shedders” of hair. I’d hate to see one that sheds a lot!

So we decided to replace it with a Dyson DC23 “Animal”. The vacuum is a compact format, as opposed to an upright, and comes with a good selection of tools and accessories including the all important turbo head for removing pet hairs. The vacuum has reasonably well packaged and took only a few minutes to assemble, though I struggled at one point to figure out just how the hose fitted around the cleaner body.

Time for a try out. There’s a reasonable length of electric cable; but I did think it could have been a few yards longer to reduce the need to keep moving sockets. I had hovered the sitting room only the afternoon before and the dog hadn’t been in there so I was completely amazed by the amount of hair that the vacuum picked up. Hopefully you can see this in the image.

Dog hair in the vacuum cylinder

So that’s a result! If I had any criticisms on this cleaner it’s in the very plastic construction of some of the parts. Only time will tell if these stand the rigors of domestic life.

As well as the large turbo head you also get:

  • Small turbo head for tight spaces (good for the stairs)
  • Wide brush head for hard floors
  • Small round brush head
  • Small narrow head for maximum suction
  • Small flat head for upholstery

The large turbo head and the three small heads all fit neatly onto the body of the cleaner for easy transport from one room to another.

Here are images of the vacuum Cylinder and the turbo heads:

The vacuum cleaner body

Large and small turbo heads

Not An Improvement

Meanwhile, on the other side of the fence, Brian Cowen was heard to say that the employment situation would “disimprove” during the summer.

What’s the matter Brian, does the word “worsen” get stuck in the gullet or are you hoping we’re all too daft to know what a disimprovement is?

Enda Kenny – Empty Promises

I don’t usually blog about politics; but with the country in the economic strife that it’s in I’m guess I’m more keenly aware of what our politicians are up to. If there’s one thing that really gets my gall up is empty rhetoric from politicians and Enda Kenny is the latest to step up to the ‘hot air’ plate.

In his speech to the Fine Gale ardfheis (as reported in the Irish Times) he made a number of far reaching promises:

  • 100,000 new jobs by end 2013
  • finances back to health by 2012
  • state financed health care for all doing away with the private / public system we have now

and all this without raising standard or higher tax rates! What’s he going to do, tax the poor instead?

Nowhere amongst all these promises does Enda Kenny make any sort of a hint as to how they’d finance this recovery. If it’s not through taxes then they’ve either got to borrow the capital or make massive cost savings in the public finances; and that spells yet more job cuts.

Come on Enda; how ya going to do it?