Cracking weather this afternoon for my fifty miler on the road through Oxfordshire and Wiltshire. Big white clouds towering above, partially screening deep blue skies and not a snow flake or rain drop in sight.

image in flickr[/url]

Hi,

Problem with WLM is I can't import a .pst file.

Problem with the trial version is it won't let me export the pst file as a 97-02 file due to reduced functionality mode.

Is Notes free??

mrs frh on parklife: "hand in hand dayglow parklife" until when she was singing it and stopped half way when I said "so what are your lyrics for parklife then??"

If you're going with flow…good luck… we went last year and everyone in the chalet came to the agreement the week was absolutely fantastic – but that flow could not be credited with any of that. You may think the following is petty but when you're paying £700 each (not incl flights or the mega entry) for the half-board service your expectations are still pretty high. This was our experience:
They didn't give us any guiding or even advice on other routes, despite the fact they were riding with their mule bar buddies (they seemed to think we were there just to ride the mega route for a week…erm, no…there is a very large mountain to explore; and its not as if we weren't capable of finding routes ourselves but as any of you who've had a guiding service, it makes it a whole lot more of a satisfying holiday). They did give us this speil about having to be qualified to guide in france even though they guide in Morzine where their permanent chalet is;
– didn't give us any help with a ticket situation we had (despite the fact they were fluent in french and the french were being, well, french) cos they were too busy riding with their buddies;
– didn't give us any tips on riding the course despite the fact they've ridden every year;
– their welcome thing was crap and the guy (I think his name was guy) arrived late when we all needed to be at registration;
– there was no workshop or tools despite the fact we were told there would be (and hence didn't take anything apart from a multitool and ended up having to get charged to use one of the shops tools).

The bottom line seemed to be: you're paying flow £700 for a week at the mega but you're actually not get any of even the most basic service you'd get for half the price at any other bike holiday company in the alpes. All you're gonna get is an over-priced chalet and that's it. Sort yourselves out. See ya!

Rant over. Still p*ssed with them about that.

Last night, after 7 hour drinking session under the belt and I went and left my lemon drizzle muffin on the train when I got off. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Sounds good. I don't know that way particularly well, so if you want to be routemaster, that's great. My number is in my profile if you need to get hold of me. 9.30 is fine – where about in Potten End?

Sure. What time and where you based? I'm at Tring station.

Been in IT but didn't know about the friday failures?? Always happens cos the hamsters on the treadmills are knackered from running all week.

I could do that but it screws up the formatting and I don't have twenty minutes free to sort that out everytime I want to do it. And my secretary always claims she's too busy to do it, which makes me angry cos she then returns back to looking at ebay.

I know you said not London, but: London Beer Festival beginning of August. I had mine there last year preceeded by a burn up the Thames in a fast boat with the James Bond music tootling out the speakers. Followed after that by comedy night at the Bedford with lots and lots of jugs of beer. All capped off with a few drinks at the Pear Tree in Hammersmith. Whole weekend cost £100 each (admittedly stayed at friend's who have pads in the smoke).

We were pretty keen on driving cars and motorbikes as fast as possible around the Nuremburg Ring but all costed up, it was pushing £400 for three days. There's an mtb trail that goes round the track, so there's something there for the cyclists as well as the petrol heads (and both).

Good luck. I've just got a job in Cirencester, having left the Cotswolds for a job in London and discovering the commuting to work by train wasn't as good as by bike…

I was pretty keen on working out there a while back. I didn't in the end, but I found these pretty useful:

Local magazine

Intrawest – who 'own' Whistler

I've got a friend out there who did his first season working the front desk of a hotel for Intrawest, and he's now a Canadian resident and full time rock climbing guide in Squamish.

The point about AS is acknowledged, but definately not victimising him. He's got a public site on myspace and with this exposure through STW he'll hopefully pick up some sponsors.

I had a dream…

My mate is a postie down in Southampton (Shirley) and he's been wearing shorts cos he says carrying bags weighing 35Kg's full of everyone's Christmas cards, CRC and Amazon stuff is hard work and he gets rather hot hauling that stuff about. And he was riding his postie bike through the snow.

Yep, just started using Avira cos citrix client wouldn't work through AVG. Have used Avast for years and years and years and think it's great – but the updates practically bring the PC to a shuddering halt.

Arrange to have a meeting with your boss and table your concerns. Best if he/she is aware early on about your expectations of the job and how they may have been affected since you started. Why did they hire you? What are you offering to them? Maybe you can discuss ways of introducing your style of selling? After all, you're there to share your knowledge/experience and it may be that existing and potential clients would warm to your style.
If, out of all that, it transpires that you and your boss have different outlooks and perhaps your boss is unwilling to change/adapt, then you've got reasonable grounds for moving on – and I bet you'd feel a lot happier knowing you've discussed this with your boss.

If you want to go back to gardening, what about horticulture? It's a bit more expansive than 'gardening' and would give you scope to move into a variety of different public/private practices later on in your career. If you've got an engineering brain and enjoy that sort of stuff, why don't you give Landscape Architecture a try?

Only one green car here

Lol, the service is getting better but I've had similar website experiences. I can hear the trains from my place and have in the past heard the Virgin fast train thundering through but on arrival at the platform, London Midland trains are cancelled due to line failure or whatever – or my favourite: 'train not running due to lack of staff' (at 6am in the morning; heavy session last night, drives?)

Groundhog Day.

Ah, sweet. Cheers.

Yeah, I don't have W7 though.

Depends what you've got in your cupboards/fridge/freezer. Give us the name of three things…

In a taxi, a couple of months ago in Sharm el Sheik, Egypt. We pulled onto the forecourt and up to the petrol pump – none of which had those plastic things round the pump unit so we could see all the pipes, cogs, levers and hamsters etc. and the whole mechanism was covered in dust. Driver gets out the car, lights up a cigarette, hands some cash to the pump master who duly fills up the car while we're sitting in it, and the engine is ticking over (although we then got out cos we got the fear at that point). Driver is wandering around the forecourt, smoking a fag and chatting on his mobile phone in the 40 deg C heat. We all got back in and drove off. So it kinda makes you wonder what all the fuss is about.

The last time I looked at Linux was about 5 years ago in the days of redhat. Back then despite their best efforts you still needed to have a good techy brain to configure the os. However, this is perfect – all I needed was to resurrect my old Acer for internet browsing (xp running like a dog despite new hd). So just burned ubuntu to a CD (instructions say it doesn't burn very well to DVD) and install was very easy (twenty mins or so) – especially to dual-boot it so I can get access to my old files. Took all of two minutes to configure the wireless and now I have a very quick o/s!

the environment

Couldn't watch it without giggling each time Eddie stomped about the place and was half expecting him to blurt out "I'm covered in Beeeeeeees"

Jo'burg for me too. We had to avoid fully stopping at certain traffic lights cos there was a good chance you'd be car-jacked. My cousin was mugged at gunpoint; we had 2 dobermans guarding the house; glass cemented along the tops of the walls; 12ft high iron gates; house wired to a private security firm.

Buy this months mag there is a free one included.

Where?! I tried three service stations along the M4 and one the M40 yesterday (two of which had sizeable WHSmiths), and they sold every other magazine except STW. Seems to me a good place to stock the mags since people are whizzing down the motorways to go to the bigger trail centres and might be stopping off to get a good read…

I had one manager who constantly exploited the skills of one particularly bright member of the team and ignored the rest of the team. Then complained because we weren't as good as this one member of the team, even though we were carrying a significant portion of the workload. Said manager also took a lot of time off work/worked from home without apparent need to, but would hound members of the team to work later in the office to finish things off.

Whilst its good to have smart people pushing the quality forward all the time, I believe part of the remit of a good manager is to value the work effort that each member of his/her team contributes, encourage progress individually for the greater good of the team, identify where effort is falling short through appropriate appraisal and above all, lead by example.

One of these, after being recommended it on this very forum:

And whilst we were out, one of our two new cats gave us a gift of their first pooh on the carpet. So, by way of apology, both went out and returned with their first live 'catch' to us – one of these.

On the RATM[/url] website:

"RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE have just announced that if their single "KILLING IN THE NAME" is number one on the Christmas Week UK pop charts over the single from X-Factor winner they WILL PLAY A HUGE FREE CONCERT IN THE UK TO CELEBRATE THE VICTORY OF THIS HISTORIC PEOPLE'S CAMPAIGN!!!! If the unprecedented grassroots movement to topple the X-Factor monopoly is successful in making Rage number one the group will return to UK shores sometime in 2010 for a massive "thankyou" gig. And get this…Rage have vowed to invite 2nd Place finisher, X-Factor empressario Simon Cowell, to MC the show!"

Aston Hill this afternoon:

Not my trail, Ashridge yesterday:

The wife speeding off ahead in Tring Park this evening:

I did it this year on my spesh epic (met another fellow rider on the hill riding an epic) I wouldn't recommend that set-up for the mega but it's what I had at the time. Still, at least I qualified unlike all the people limping down the mountain with snapped commencal frames…

The long, pedalling, sandy bits that traverse the mountain will sap your strength if you're lugging a heavy bike around – and you'll still have a lot of pedalling to do after that. Something like a spicy would be nice.

I'm w**king from home although the two cats, Playboy and Jazz, are sitting on my lap so it's quite hard to w**k properly.

Pimp, have you been up to Ashridge today? I went up earlier, before putting in a decent morning's w**k session, to take some pictures of the snow. There were a couple of farmers about, w**king with some sheep in a field.

By way of a warning, all the trains were delayed earlier. Blinking cold and a flutter in Tring this morning. But the full force of the cold weather front has just smashed into snowy Soho where a few flakes have fallen.

Hendrix, Faith No More, RATGM.

sam i am.

Similar situation for me too: went to dentist with 'prices similiar to NHS', was given temp filling, charged £54 and told to come back 3 weeks later. Did so, was told temp filling needed to be removed, and root canal required for squillions of pounds. Got very angry cos didn't see how he thought 'a filling will do' and then three weeks later, 'oh actually mate, you need root canal surgery.' Went to a different, proper NHS dentist and got teeth polished and the filling replaced properly and an aditionally repair for £30. Definately worth shopping around!