What has got me wound up this past few days is the fact that I need to purchase a mobile dongle for work, just one dongle but Orange seem to be happy to ignore my offer of money for a 12 months contract. I thought (how ever foolishly) that it would be easy to go to the Orange shop and purchase a dongle, well it would of been had I been happy to purchase it in my name and pay for it via my bank account or via my credit card. But it is for work and I won’t be the one using it, apparently their system can’t handle a purchase for a business in the shop (or though I have had some thoughts on this more later).

So I thought I would phone Orange Business on Thursday afternoon, three times I tried, three times got through the menu system and three times I was cut off. So I clicked on that little button on their web site that say arrange a call back, twice I clicked and filled in the form have and guess what no call back. I tried calling them again to day, this time I got through the menu system, the phone rang and rang and rang and then a nice lady told me my call was important to them and they would answer the phone soon possible, then it rang and rang and rang and then the nice lady…………….. you get the picture, (Before anybody says well buy one from one of the other mobiles communication companies, I can’t, it has to be Orange, it is a long story).

Now I have been thinking, that I can’t be the only person wanting to buy a dongle (or phone) from an Orange shop for business. Was it just to much trouble for the shop assistant to process my order (we got as far as sitting in the little cubicle and tapping away on her screen). So I am going to try one of the other Orange shops in the area. But what gets me is the stupidity of it all, I just want to purchase a single Orange dongle and so far Orange are refusing to deal with me.

If you work in a mobile phone shop that deals with Orange, you could be my next best friend

I have a few days of for the sons half term, so as he decided to he wanted to go with his aunt to Southampton, I was free to go for a bike ride…………in the rain. The day did not start well, I woke up the second the alarm went off and could not go back to sleep, I had planned to stay in bed till at least 8am but got up at 7:15. I went to get my GPS out and check the route I wanted was loaded on the gps and I could not get it to switch on. This meant a change of route so instead of the New Forest and exploring new routes I would go to Moors Valley and ride some bits I have not ridden for a 12 month or so. After loading the van in the rain I decided to give the gps one last chance and it worked, so it was Burley here I come.

I had packed my rain jacket and trousers ready for the onslaught but as there was very little rain when I set off, they stayed in my bag but I was expecting to be getting them out sooner rather than later. So I was more than a little surprised about an hour later to be taking my jumper off as the sun was out and I was getting a little warm. A short while later my gloves were taken off as my hand were sweating in my gloves (first time I have worn them since last winter). The route was a shorter version of the Autumn falling leaves ride, I was trying to avoid riding some of the roads (I’m a mountain biker not a roadie) and trying some alternative paths to the wide gravel fire roads. Well some of those paths were wet, muddy and flooded, it was er, interesting. I enjoyed my 20 miles round the forest, was expecting to get absolutely soaked but never got wet (if you don’t include anything below my knees).

More riding later in the week but apparently we are shopping tomorrow……….

While everything around me seems to be breaking I must be really tempting fate as I have been playing with a new mini laptop today. Bigger than a netbook but smaller than a notebook the Thinkpad Edge 11 is quite dinky. As much as I like the dinky size on the laptop I think I would find it to small for long term use. This one’s job if for occasional office use and on the road use, it will certainly be a lot easier to carry around compared to my 15″ screened Lenovo laptop.

Well that it I’m off before I break something else……………….

I was going for a ride tonight but for some reason my battery for my light is taking an age to charge, I stored the battery with a part charge in a cool place as is the recommendation on various sites I checked out on the web. I put the light on charge at 2pm this afternoon and it is still charging now, so not sure what is going with the battery charging. Hopefully I will get out on another night this week.

Well it is a short blog tonight as there not a lot to say

Once I had got everything working and my server had reappeared (the disappearance was linked to the item I was installing not working correctly) it was nearly mid afternoon before I left for home a couple of hours later than planned. Decide to go back the scenic route via Stow-on-the-Wold, where I passed two groups on mountain bike riders, riding up the road caked in mud and looking as though they had enjoyed their ride. I felt really peeved off, the sun was out, the sky was blue and I was working. With rain forecast for tomorrow I am not sure if I will get to ride or not, will have to decide on how heavy the rain is. It will have to be a morning ride as I want to watch the F1 which is on just after midday.

I would like to see Hamilton or Webber win the F1 but there is little chance of Hamilton winning it so I will be hoping Webber is there at the end, just as long as Vettel and Alonso don’t win it I don’t mind. Wanted to watch the England Australia rugby match but I never got back in time so I watched the highlights, certainly looked like the England boys had a field day. Might of been a bit different had Australia put those penalty away rather than missing. I did manage to watch New Zealand walk all over Scotland

My week has not really got any better or worse than Tuesday blogs, I have ignored the problem for the time being, been to busy working on the new phone system install which has been happening this past week and seemed to go fairly well (nothing I was doing, I was just a helping hand).

But now we are into mountain bikes I can see A GPS would be very useful additions, at least I think it would? But the more I look into it the more confused I become. Let put it this way I can see three possible usages for using a GPS with mountain biking.

• a) For planning a route before leaving home and using it for directions while out riding
• b) for recording a route when you are out riding
• c) to aid redirection if you change your route while out riding

So lets start with a) this is all well and good until you find out that with some GPS units you can’t use the maps from the GPS on your PC to plan the route, you have to invest in third party software at more cost.

Then there is b) now this is fairly simple for most GPS units or so I have been told, this is useful if you find a new paths and want to record it, you just cycle down the path and the GPS will record the route for you (assuming you told it to record the route you take).

Finally c) so you have gone out for the day and you end up injuring yourself, nothing serious but it is enough to stop you from completing the ride and you need to get back to your starting point or the point where you were going to be picked up by the quickest route. So you want to be able to say, I’m at A and I want to get to B, it can do that but not in the same way as it would do it with a Sat Nav from a car. It will point you in the right direction but it won’t tell you there a large lake to go round or a cliff to get down.

Then there are the maps that the GPS units use (most come with a basic map but you need to purchase more detailed maps), various different scales, various areas of the UK and all with a nice price tag on them. Now obviously the cheaper the model GPS the less features, the bigger clearer screen the more ££££’s will be leaving your pocket. All in all it is not a cheap option.

Now before anybody says buy an OS map, I have, 3 to be exact, but they are not the easiest thing to use when out riding (also means I have to carry my reading glasses with me to be able to read the map).

I had hoped to get out riding today but the winds were just to strong, gust up to 65mph locally with the wind eventually dropping off around 5:00pm tonight. Add that to the near horizontal rain, it was not an ideal recipe for riding. Which was just as well. I had some new handlebar grips to put on my bike and when I went out in the shed to fit them I found I had a flat tyre. The culprit was a 3/4″ thorn stuck in the front tyre, not sure where it came from as the last ride was a mid week blast on the road around the block.

This post is going to be a ramble about anything and everything. It was weigh in on Monday night and I had lost 2lbs. I am now at my lowest weight for a long time, was hoping to push it this week to get a 3lb loss to hit the 3st loss mark but I don’t think I will be able to rely on the cycling this weekend to help, the weather is looking totally pants. I went for a ride last night only a quick ride around the block, set the gps on my mobile phone before I left, got it out my pocket on my return to check how far the ride was and it had failed to work. It is not the first time the gps has failed but I am not sure why. I think the ride was about 4 maybe 4.5miles and I did it at speed, well fast for me anyway and I was bloody knackered when I got back. Apparently 5 miles in 30 minutes is supposed to help with my diet, only Monday will tell.

Talking GPS, her indoors in pestering me about what I want of Christmas, a GPS has been mentioned by her but I am not sure, it really depends on the level of details that I get from the screen\maps. It certainly would be handy for cycling but a handheld GPS is an expensive items, just not sure it would be worth it and give me what (I think) I want from a GPS.

While I have been doing all this cycling the one thing that has suffered is the photography, I have not taken a picture for month. My main area of interest kite flying is closing down for the winter (at least in my area, the look site we can fly one is water logged). The next big event we go to (and that only to take pictures) is the icicles (so named as it bloody freezing on the beach in January) event at Westward Ho! (its the same location the sidebar photographs were taken) towards the end of January 2010. Been the last couple of years for the day, would like to think I can get the camera out before then though. Would like to take it when we go out riding but I think the risk of falling off and damaging the camera\lense is to great. Thinking about going to the MTB centre near Blandford over Christmas\New Year so might do a bit of both, half day riding then half day photography and then half day riding……………..something tells me that won’t work.

The photograph’s I have added bear no relevance to this post what so ever, they are only there to break up my boring writing, the wood scene was taken 18 months ago and the sunset was taken over 2 years ago!

I have decided that I am going to make some changes to this site, while I like the quirky nature of this theme I just feel……………..well I feel I could find something better so I am on the lookout for a new theme.

Well that is enough of a waffle from me, I’m out of here

Talking technology the IT world is waiting with baited breath for October the 22nd, the day Microsoft release Windows 7, their replacement for the flop called Vista. The fact that every-man and his dog has been using the beta and the RC (release candidates) version for the past 6 months has nothing to do with it. Microsoft learnt that by releasing a beta and RC version they could gain a wealth of information about bugs and other problems so that when they released the final version the release would be near faultless, well that is yet to be seen but can it really be as bad as the reception Vista got. My job is IT and I can say I am the only person in the company with a Vista powered PC because Vista is crap. I can’t risk palming it off to somebody else because if they have a problem with it I have to support it remotely which is not my idea of fun.

I have to be honest and say that I am not a great fan of Microsoft, I find there is little real innovation in their products, they build in subtle changes to their software within each version which pushes it up the power required to run ladder, thus forcing users to purchase ever more powerful PC to run ever more bloated software. It is their marketing department that deserve all the praise, they could sell sand to an Arab and the poor guy would think he got a good deal.

My main PC at home is a Linux based PC, the PC is about 6 years old, basic mini ATX type, it is still reasonably fast and run 24\7, at the end of the day it just works and I can’t ask for anymore than that.