In the Tradition of Laughing at Oneself...

Anyone recognise this South Park character?

Lowey Predicts

Lowey Predicts

This is my first prediction. I believe I can have at least one prediction come to fruit within the next month, but I can not guarantee anything. If my predictions prove popular I may even go so far as to start a Horoscope.

LoweyPages

This is, perhaps, also the time to announce my new website, which you will have seen if you followed that link above. It is far from complete, but it is going to very much be an evolving site. The idea is that because it is highly dynamic it will be easier for me to maintain, and I hope to keep everything as up-to-date as possible. There's not much up there atm, but I will remedy that asap.

A Weird Thing

I always thought this was a cliche... In films when a car runs out of petrol, or a plane is leaking aviation fuel, and the fuel gauge reads empty. Someone always flicks it. Always. I never had any idea why, it always struck me as a stupid cliche, until today.

When I got home from work and was parking the car, I noticed the fuel gauge was beyond empty. This couldn't be possible, it had half a tank of diesel that morning. Unsure as to what came over me, I flicked the gauge - and the arm jumped straight back up to the "half full" mark.

Clearly everything in films is real and I have been wrong all these years. Clearly Germans are all mad scientists and/or deranged lunatics who want to take over the world, Americans are all heroes, the English are all professors who speak with an Oxford accent or coal miners who speak with a Yorkshire accent and the French are all arty farty lovers.

In a desperate bid to prove to me that Horoscopes can in fact predict the future, one of my colleagues decided to read my Horoscope to me. She opened the paper and then asked me

"What are you thinking is likely to happen in your immediate future. What are you likely to be doing in the next day or two?"

Straight away I knew She'd picked up on something that could potentially make the Horoscope look plausible, but I trusted my logic so I answered truthfully.

"Going home to see the parents."

"And how are you going to get home?"

"Er, in the car..."

It was obvious there was some form of reference to cars or driving or travelling in the Horoscope. She then read it aloud for everyone to hear.

--Russell Grant's stars, Cambrian News Thursday 8 April 2004.

Well of course this was taken to be indisputable proof by the (entirely female) crowd at the table. I allowed them to lap up their "victory" for a short while and then put forward a very simple point.

"It's Bank holiday weekend. Of course there is going to be lots of traffic."

This seemed to deflate them somewhat, but they were still trying to convince me that Russell Grant was somehow able to look into the skies and tell me, and the other 12th of the population who were born in the sign of Taurus, what was about to happen in my immediate future. So I made the point that, if the stars told people all about my life, then how come the two different Horoscopes they had read me from different newspapers could contradict each other. Surely if the stars are determining my life the two Horoscopes should be the same, or at least similar, or vaguely alike...certainly not exact opposites.

I also pointed out that the other Horoscope was ridiculously vague. One line was "you must either build walls, or tear them down". So that sentence applies to 100% of the entire population. As does "Don't underestimate your need for a good nights sleep and a proper meal, when you're on the spot and have to think on your feet you'll need to be sharp and have your wits about you." from Russell Grant's stars.

Anyway all of this has made me think. It would make a very interesting experiment to try writing my own predictions in the style of a Horoscope of what is to happen in the following week. Then seeing how accurate I am.

I fully plan on implementing this, just as soon as my new website is ready to go live. Watch this space.

Jeeeeezus

Woman gives herself a Caesarean

How in the name of gods did she even know what she was doing? It's a major intrusive operation. Not something you just do.

The 36.5 hour contract was wrong. Turns out it's 37. However, it turns out it's not that black and white anyway. The number of hours I work is to be decided by the head of department.

And he says 35. WOOHOO!

Lots of lying under the car (both with and without the engine running) has revealed nothing about the leak. All I know is the water appears to be coming from the oil sump. I'm not certain whether this is even possible or not. It could be that the water is trickling around the lip where the two halves of the sump are bolted together and so it could just be that it only looks like the water is coming from there. Other suggestions are that the oil cooler might be leaking. I wasn't even aware the car has one.

I'm now thinking my best chance is to drag the car back to Nottingham on Thursday and let my Dad take a look. At least then it can be taken off the road as necessary, and he has a suitable set of tools, which I don't have.

I couldn't even change a blown bulb because I couldn't get the damn negative terminal off the battery.

In other news I was poking around looking at sites I've not visited for a good many years, and found out that a lad I went to school with now has his own column on the BBC Nottingham Sport website. I have to admit to being surprised.

Car Woes

The car is getting through approximately a litre of water a day. Not good. The fact it is leaking is bad, but the fact that it is leaking at a constant rate regardless of whether the engine is in use or not seems to imply it could be a crack in the engine (expensive to fix) or the radiator is buggered (very expensive). Really I need to get under the car and have a good poke around under there and see if I can find the source of the leak.

A quick inspection last night seemed to suggest that the bottom left of the radiator was wet, but I couldn't tell whether the water was just running down over the radiator or whether it was the radiator itself. How anybody does any serious work on cars I do not know, it seems near impossible to get inside the damn things to do anything with them.

The Haynes manual isn't proving particularly helpful in the matter. It tells me that I definitely have a leak, and it suggests remedying this with the following procedure:

Right. Thanks for that Haynes.

Yes. Yes, that might be it.

Yes I think typing the password wrong may very well have been the reason I couldn't get in. So glad I wrote my password down.

Ok, now why can't I log into my computing account? I paid another £125 of the remaining £250 of my tuition fees as agreed today, so they have no reason to lock my account...

Car Insurance

I've just switched from AA car insurance to Endsleigh. I can't remember a single person ever saying a single good thing about Endsleigh, but from what I've seen of them so far they have been great. Really helpful and professional. Yes yes, clearly they wanted to take my money off me, but that's what they're there to do...but they've given me various discounts which has lowered my insurance to an acceptable rate which I can actually afford to pay.

When I cancelled the AA insurance, the small-print I was looking at suggested it was going to cost me a small fortune to cancel. I can tell you that I am somewhat relieved that they calculated it and found the rebate covered everything.

Right. Having worked an extra hour I am going to go home and start work on my second job. Fun.