Wednesday 23 August 2017

Holiday

Bolingblog is on holiday for a couple of weeks.

Back in early September.

Richard "Open Road" B

Tuesday 15 August 2017

Detailing

This weekend I have mainly been washing a very small car. I'm not car-proud, but I am quite tight and I want to maintain as much of its value as I can. I’ve got a driving holiday coming up so I wanted to put a new layer of wax on the paintwork to protect it. The standard procedure for washing a car is:
1) cold water rinse
2) Shampoo
3) rinse
4) dry
That much was done in about an hour. Then the black marks from melted pieces of tyre and the desiccated insects become quite obvious. I do have both the right solvents in stock...
5) tar remover
6) insect remover
Both leave a residue that needs to be removed...
7) shampoo
8) rinse
9) dry
The car is now pretty clean but there are still little sticky bits of dirt that I don't want to trap under the wax. I have recently bought a massive lump of automotive blu-tack and its associated lubricant which you wipe over the entire surface of the paintwork to pick up little bits...
10) clay-bar
The lubricant leaves a residue that needs to be removed but thankfully it's water based…
11) rinse
12) dry
I was then able to do what I had originally intended...
13) wax
14) buff

It took me seven hours to wash my car.

Richard "at the clay bar, clay bar, clay bar" B

Tuesday 8 August 2017

R.H.S

My mother is very bright and pleasantly crackers.

In the 90s there was a tv. quiz show called "15 to 1". She applied to appear on it because she saw an advert that offered free travel and accommodation (near some of her friends). She was accepted, appeared on the programme, and answered almost all of the questions correctly. She didn't win because she had never bothered to watch the programme and see how the game was played.

Later, because she has a big garden and was in need of a hobby, she signed up for a horticulture course at a garden centre. She was expecting elderly ladies drinking tea and learning how to grow their favourite flowers. Unfortunately it was a professional qualification and every other student ran or worked at a commercial garden or nursery. She didn't like to admit she was on the wrong course so she knuckled down, studied, read, revised and was awarded a professional horticulture qualification that she has never used.

She recently hired a tree surgeon and was laughing at his business card – coming round here, showing off your certification from the Royal Horticulture Society. You don't impress me. We've all got one of those. I got one by accident .

Richard "Apple that didn't fall that far from the tree" B

Tuesday 1 August 2017

The Impossible Dream

I'm a computer programmer and last week I had my performance review at work. My boss said that he was "impressed with my misguided tenacity". I'm taking that as a compliment despite the fourth word. I do have a history of doggedly finishing projects that might have been better left for dead.

"To find the unfindable fault
To cure the incurable leak
To tune the untunable loop
To make the unmakable tweek"

"To code the uncodable app
To write when your keyboard unplugs
To read when your screen is too blurry
To fix the unfixable bug"

"This is my quest
To pore through that heap
No matter the threadcount
No matter how deep"

"To fight for fault-free
Without thanks or applause
To replace bloat SQL
With an elegant clause"

"And I know if I'll only be true
To this mind numbing quest
My OCD will be modestly eased
When I'm laid to my rest"

"And the source will be better for this
That one man, pale and awkward and odd
Still strove in his last K of disk space
To fix the unfixable bug"

Richard "The Geek From La Mancha" B