The joy of ex(cel)

Have you ever been to a party and been drinking a can of Coke*? Sure you have. You reach across to have a swig of the over-sweet beverage, but instead manage to pick up the can that everyone has been using as an ashtray.

The point I’m trying to make is that the sensation you are expecting and the sensation you experience are staggeringly different.

This is how I felt when I first used Excel 2007 (a couple of weeks ago).

I still feel partly this way, although I am getting used to it. However, I have now agreed to run a seminar for the rest of the people I work with on “the main differences between Excel 2003 and 2007 and how to overcome them” or something like that.

Does anyone who actually has a clue about such things have any tips?

 

* or Pepsi, or Irn Bru, it still works

Spiced ham

In the olden days of blogging, I used to get spam comments. They mainly involved a massive wall of text with all kinds of words in, presumably to register on search engines. Like so:

Barbie x-factor barack obama football call of duty 4 porn computers strictly come dancing east fife david beckham maltesers how to meet women wordpress daily mail

… that kind of thing.

These days, I have a new type of comment which pretend to be a person. They typically say “Hey! I just found your blog. Unlike every other blog out there, you seem to have real charm and intelligence. I’ll be checking back here regularly!”

What is going on? There is presumably a sinister conspiracy of sorts, but alas I only have time to draw your attention to it, not specify exactly how liberal whiners are trying to take over the world.

Maybe someone will enlighten us in the comments.

Chicken supreme

Did anyone know that Britain has a new Supreme Court?

It has not had that much coverage.

The Grauniad spent much time discussing the toilets, and the carpets have also been the recipients of a surprising number of column inches. Likewise, the address and email address. Less so, the constitutional impact it may have.

Those articles that did go into more depth all seemed to repeat the same quotes from a couple of ex-Law Lords which makes me wonder whether people just don’t understand what is going on. This is more palatable to me than the possibility that people just don’t care.

Anyway, how’ve you been?

Good/bad weekend

Good
I sang at the Royal Albert Hall this weekend. John Rutter was conducting. It was very exciting.

Bad
So did lots of other people so it wasn’t really anything special.

Good
I sang quite well.

Bad
The bloke behind me wasn’t so good.

Really bad
This is because he had “had flu for a few days but [he] really wanted to come”.

He looked in a bad way, sweating and heaving. What an absolute divvy. So far I am symptom-free. I will keep you up to date.

My hero

Rice Krispies are a fine, versatile cereal. Ideal in a bowl, with milk, as (presumably) nature intended. Also good mixed up with melted chocolate and honey! Mmmm! Less good in the overpriced and artificial tasting Rice Krispie Squares. But nobody is perfect.

But Snap, Crackle and Pop, Kellogg’s’s* poster boys for said cereal are sadly disappointing. They are, quite literally, a bunch of fairies. And the fact that they released a book of magic tricks with Paul Daniels in the 1980s doesn’t do much for them in my eyes. (Some of the tricks in this book actually didn’t work. Shame. Shame on you, Paul.)

Now Kellogg’s know everything about nothing, and not too much about that, but they couldn’t fail to see that there was a gap in the market and so they introduced Ricicles, which were a lot like Rice Krispies except they had a lot more sugar in them so you could run around all day pissing your parents off.

And to fit in with this ADHD-inducing behaviour, they needed a manly-man type character for the box… enter Captain Rik! Yes, an astronaut! That is more like it!

Captain Rik and his little sugared bits of rice were my constant companions throughout the years 7 to 11. I have even named one of my fillings in his honour! Every time I accidentally chew a bit of the foil wrapped round a chocolate bar, I am reminded of the good Captain.

But, fame will take its toll on the most dedicated astronaut/cereal box character and Captain Rik slid into alcohol and drug abuse. In the early 1990s, the foolish leprechaun from Nestle had been bleating on about someone having stolen his “Lucky Charms” for some years, but no-one had listened to him, thinking he was just a pointless stereotype. Imagine our surprise when we discovered that Captain Rik, on one of his regular jaunts across the briny to sample the Guinness, had indeed pilfered the Charms and introduced them into his own cereal.

Of course the public voted with their feet and the sales figures for these hellish, hybrid Ricicharms were much lower than the classic. Kellogg’s management team immediately re-introduced “proper” marshmallowless Ricicles alongside Captain Rik’s and eventually the “new” improved Ricicles faded from our shelves, leaving Rik a broken man.

Kellogg’s hired a succession of character actors to play Rik, and pensioned him off to the Isle of Wight, where he remains in undignified retirement. Most of the other cereal characters ignore him now, and only the honey monster goes to visit, although he’s stopped buying Rik a pint, as he never gets one back.

But… he is still my hero, and I have the fillings to prove it.

 

* couldn’t resist it, sorry…

All requests Monday

This is the 199th post on this blog (go on, count them).

So I thought to shake things up a little I would ask what you wanted the 200th post to be about. Since it is such a milestone and all.

Go mad, don’t hold back etc.*

Closing date is… hmmm… 10th June.

 

* really, don’t. If I don’t like it I’ll just delete it and pretend it wasn’t there… what, you think this is some kind of democracy?

Aladdin 2

RJ: “Did you know that the world record for eating jaffa cakes is four in a minute?”
Chris: [predictably] “I could do that!”
[one minute and five jaffas later]
Chris: “Wow, I actually could do that.”

Either the world record is not four in a minute (likely) or I AM THE CHAMPION.

Vote time

Local elections tomorrow. Need to decide who to vote for… not much time left!

Can’t vote for the Tories obviously.

Then I stumbled upon “Austerity for who?” at the Labour website… now I would have thought that it would be “Austerity for whom?” but surely I can’t be right, as they must, must have had it checked?

So I can’t vote for them… as they have made me feel stupid. And they are all crooks.

Could vote for the liber… liberal demo… demosomethings. Does anyone know anything about them?

Greens? Bit extreme?

I guess I’ll just put a big cross next to the BNP to make sure they don’t get in.

Past glories

Recently, I re-read my old blog from day one up to the present day. I really enjoyed it, and was left thinking how amusing I was.

More recently (i.e. five minutes ago) I started doing a similar thing, with the aim of copying across some of my gems for posterity. I was dismayed to find out that they were all utter crap, and I am neither funny nor insightful. This was disappointing for me.

Many thanks to those who didn’t point it out at the time, as I would have found it upsetting.

Blog aims

Dear memory,

You are crap. Why do you let me leave the house without a tie? Why do you let me omit the “o” in ingenious, causing me to look like a misspelling fool? Why do… never mind, it’s gone.

This is what I want to do with the new blog:

1. Write on it more often
2. Copy some good bits of the old blog across so I can delete it without feeling nostalgic
3. Er… never mind

Don’t forget this stuff – it’s important!

Yours sincerely,

Chris

 

Dear Chris,

You have now written two boring posts that no-one other than you will want to read. That is not ingenius.

Yours truly,

Your memory