So for me, the blog came first, I thought it would be a good idea to start a blog so I set up a blog with Blogger.com which I did in June 2009, but then my interest faded, till late last year when I was moving to a new web host. I moved to TSO Host where I could host several web sites and had simple a WordPress installation process (you have an option, install the hard way or the easy way, you are going to choose the easy way aren’t you?). So once the hosting was setup and running I moved my blog to its current home here and started using WordPress to write my blog. Although this was around the same time as I got my bike the blog still did not have a theme, it just ambled on.

I read a couple of other blogs over the Xmas holidays which were written by those who are (were) overweight like me and had started cycling as a means to help with the weight loss and were blogging their progress. So I thought yes that is a good idea and moved the main theme of my blog to my diet, weight loss and mountain bike riding. I felt that talking through my blog about how my weight loss was going would help me in my efforts to lose the weight I needed to. I will still post about anything else I like from time to time, after all its my blog and I can write what I like, it is not like you are being made to read this.

As for the cycling, well that was just going to be an aid to help loose weight, but once I threw my leg over the bike I started to remember all the fun I had when I was a youngster. I had what was commonly known as a “Tracker” bike (no not the bike Raleigh manufactured), homebuilt from bits, based on 26″ wheel with a dropped cross bar frame (curved from the steering head to the seat tube), cow horn handle bars, one brake (normally the rear), single gear, (although mine had a 3 speed hub). I was happy riding anywhere where there was no tarmac including the sea!! Normally I had bald tyres, buckled wheels, wheel bearing, chain and gears that were shot and no lights (sound like a modern day BMX-er). But as I got older the lure disappeared, I remember seeing the first mountain bikes and wondering why the hell you needed front suspension and there were no mountains around here (Poole, Dorset).

So coming back on topic (sorry I wandered of into nostalgia), I love cycling now. In the past 9 months I have seen corners of Dorset I never knew existed many of them a couple of miles from my home. It is something both the wife and I can do together (although she is off the bike injured at the moment) and sometimes we even ride as a family.

As for blogging I do it because I want to, I only write about what I want to (mainly dieting and mountain bike riding). I have found it interesting reading some of the comments I wrote 12 months ago (and cringing over my spelling and grammar!). I have found morale support for my weight loss from the writes of other related blogs and if comments I post helps others else then great.

My Links page has a list of some of the blogs I read.

This post seemed to have waffled and wandered on long enough, so I am out of here

Well the sun is out and it looks like summer has made a return trip for a few days. The fridge is loaded with BBQ goodies so tonight could be one of rare occasions this summer. Still on the look out for a goat, we cut the grass last week but with all the rain and warm weather its is making a come back.

We had a major discussion a couple of weeks ago, regarding holidays and for one reason or another I have already taken three weeks of my holiday and feel as though I have not had a holiday. For one reason or another I have not had that time when you lay back and think sod it, it is my holiday and I am doing nothing, I was always doing something for somebody else.

On a better note (and only just) it was weight in night to night and for the second week running I lost weight. Ok it was not earth shattering amount but it was a loss and I am now at my lowest weight I have been since starting  Slimming World over 12 months ago. Just got to keep on the straight and narrow for the next 6 days (he says sitting eating chocolate chip cookies!!).

……and if I am not frayed enough, I come to post this and the system errors out on me, so 20 hours later I can now post it………………..

When you have one of those long drives, have you ever thought what you would do if you won the lottery, you dream about telling the boss what he can do with his job, the new house, sorry I mean mansion you would buy, deciding whether to buy a Bentley or Aston Martin and then realising you can buy both, the year long world cruise, the days spent on a sunny island paradise beaches and not having to lift a finger for anything. Once you have exhausted that episode of your dream, your mind scales the dream down to something a little more realistic and you start trying to work out how much money you would have to win just so that you could pack up work pay the mortgage and any debts off and still maintain the same standard of living your have now. Where would you invest the money to get the best return to keep you out of employment and become a person of leisure.

By the time this little episode of your dream has finished you move onto the fact of whether you would be happy if you won that sort on money. We have all seen the stories of what happens to some winners of large sums of money, those that go completely off the rails, to those that claim that they will continue to work 40 hours a week and it won’t change them. How many long lost relative will come out the wood work, old friends you have not seen since you left school start to contact you and expect you to splash the cash in there direction not to mention the pleading letters that find you despite the no publicity clause. 

By now desperation is setting in you start trying to remember if you checked the last lottery tickets you bought. Is the next lottery a roll over? Have I bought a ticket yet whats day is it, must remember to buy a ticket on the way home. 

You are awaken from your long drive induced day dream by your aching legs complaining as you try to stand as you get out of the car, the dreams fades fades from your mind as the reality of several hours of impending work now face you.

Several hours later and many degree tireder you return to the car and start your journey home and slowly but surely your mind slips into that day dream mode again, only this time what are you going to dream about, the blonde in the bar or the rock star in front of 70000 people………………….

Well yesterday the Red Arrows were displaying at Swanage as part of Carnival week. So we went over to see them fly and made our way up the hill above Peveril Ledge to watch them. The Red Arrows main display area was over Swanage bay which is right in front of the towns beach while the hill we were standing on was on the west side of the bay about 100ft+ above sea level. In some parts of there display they overfly the hill where we were standing and it was as though you could reach up and touch them they seemed that close. On one occasion I looked back in-land just in time to see one head straight for us (heading back out to sea), I caught him on camera but the picture does little justice to how low he was when he flew over the hill.

The picture I have enclosed show one on the Arrows flying back across the hill toward the town, the blob in the front of the picture is a persons head so you can see they were not that high (compared to the height you would of seen them on the beach below).

Due to the amount of traffic we encountered on our way over to Swanage we decided to take advantage of the park and ride service which is run by Swanage Railway. We parked at Norden (which is the limit of the line) which is about 1 mile past Corfe Castle. We had to pay £2 to park all day which I thought was good but the £25 return for two adults and a child I thought was a bit pricey (£27 total) I would of expected to get a refund on purchasing the train tickets for the parking. The distance is only about 6 miles from Swanage to Norden, the return journey back from Swanage to Norden was standing room only until we got to Corfe Castle.

But it was enjoyable trundling along the track pulled by steam engines, including get a face full of gunk from sticking my head out the window as we traveled along. More information regarding theSwanage Railway can be found here

Finally today I got the kites out again and went for a fly, only time this week been able to, the winds all week have been climbing into the high 20′s, low 30′s during the afternoons. To-day flying was curtailed by rain (and my parking ticket was about to run out) so we packed up and came home, just checked the winds now and they have hit the high 20′s again since we have been home. While those sorts of speeds are nice on an open beach it can be a bit lively on our little bit of grass where we fly.

Returning to my comments on Friday about “1and1″, they are certainly making life difficult, first they cancel my cancellation, a badly worded button on there web site makes it look like you need to click it and then when you do you find out that you have cancelled your cancellation and have to start over again. I have now re-cancelled my hosting with them and my web sites are now un-contactable while they move my DNS settings which will take god know how long. It just goes to prove that cheapest is not always the best.

Ok before I loose the plot completely this is what I am on about, I have three web sites and I wanted to change the settings on one of them (I won’t get techy with you about what I wanted but it was straight forward requirement), being unable to find where I needed to change the setting on their support web page I phoned the web hosting company up and told the call centre girl exactly what I wanted, she then passed me to another department and I explained again what I wanted. Somewhere between the two call centre people I spoke to, they managed to remove the web hosting on one of my other web site so it was not visible from Wednesday afternoon till sometime last night\early this morning. During this time I have spoken to other call centre staff in the UK, the USA and the Philippines and despite there international workforce they have failed at offering the most basic level of support.

The name of this incompetents company is “1and1″, it is not only the fact that they got it wrong but the fact that they were unable (or unprepared) to correct the cock-up they made. So I have spent the last 36 hours sorting out a new web hosting package for all three of my web sites. I am not moving away from “1and1″ solely based on this cock-up, I was considering moving away from them anyway in the next 12 months (which in part was what the change I phoned up about was for, tidying up loose ends ready for a move) as they do not offer the service I wanted at a reasonable cost, but having had this problem thrust upon me now, is the straw that broke this camel back.

We spent the weekend at Essex Kite Park (South End on Sea to be exact), the weather was OK and the company was great. But the wind did not want to co-operate and blew through strongly from varying direction and in gusts which made flying difficult to dangerous.

When we go away to these type of do’s we normally borrow a motorhome and this time was not exception. I normally have a choice and pick a good one but I can honestly say I hated this one because of one thing, the sleeping arrangement. It was not because the double bed area was only marginally bigger than a single and we (the wife and thee) had to sleep in separate beds, no it was because the bed was not long enough, I am only 5′ 7″ and I could not stretch out length ways without hitting something. At least tonight I can sleep in my own bed without hitting my head or stubbing my toe.

In our travels to Essex and back we had the joys of the M25 car park. On the way up it was delays at Chorley Wood road works (going clockwise) but that was nothing compared to the tailbacks going anti-clockwise J14 to J5. On the way home the tailback were again in the Chorley Wood road works but this time the tailbacks were not helped with two broken down vans in the roadworks, one behind each other!! I am not sure which stretch of road I hate most the M25 or the M1, fortunately I don’t have to travel either very often and I will do what I can to avoid travelling on either if I can.

Here is an example, I bought a new computer for work, it was delivered straight from the factory as opposed to being in storage for several months first. During setting it up I was unable to get one of the options to work. So I ended up e-mailing the support desk with the details of the problems and all the relevant version details of the software. First reply said if you go here and look here you will find the option you require, well they were wrong the option was not there. So I emailed back and stated that their suggestion was incorrect and listed the options I had when I went to the place they suggested and again included all the relevant software version. Next reply stated if you have version x.y or lower then you need to install the latest version z. Had I not told the manufacturer twice what version of software I have in the previous two e-mails? Not only that there were no instruction on where or how to download this software so off went another e-mail to support requesting help again. This all took over a week and it not exclusive to just this manufacturer, you buy a new PC and the first couple of hours is spent updating the installed software.

Now would we stand for this if we had purchased a new TV, it was not working correctly out of the box and we had to update it before we could use it correctly?? I don’t believe we would so why do we accept it for PC’s?Then we move on to the operating system on these PC, there are 100′s of operating system, most will know Windows XP or Vista, some will know Apple OSX and the an even smaller number will know (the various version\distributions) Linux. While it is fair to say that the majority of users will be using windows based software they are also the one who face the biggest job keeping there computers up to date and protected compared to those using OSX or Linux but to use one those two operating system your knowledge of computers tends to be greater. If you don’t update and secure your computer you will fall foul of those that take pride in hacking\infecting your PC. Then you will need more in depth knowledge to get out of the mess you are in.

I could go on and on about this and bore you all to tears, but the point is that with the technology we have available today we should not have to spend hours of our time and money updating our PC’s. The IT industry’s is to busy protecting it own little corner of the market and would rather rip its customers off rather than sit down with fellow IT industry manufacturer and sort these problems out.