Category: Uncategorized

Seven years ago was wonderful, and now is more so.

The Pareto Principle was discovered when Vilfredo Pareto observed that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by just 20% of the population. Since then, many other people in different disciplines have observed similar 80/20 distributions.

In programming this often means that the last 20% of a development project can require 80% of the cost. Knowing this, it would make sense to concentrate on producing a 80% solution; this would happen if you use the "worse is better" philosophy.

It seems that the same principle can also apply to car repair. My car had been sluggish and inefficient recently, so I went to the garage today. The mechanic examined the engine and determined that the problem was a build-up of carbon on the valves that stopped them closing correctly. He told me that the correct way to fix this problem was to remove all the valves and clean them by hand: this would cost at least

New Year’s Eve, somebody slashed 3 of my tyres while my car was in a car park in Belfast. We suspect it might have been the car park staff, but we can’t prove that.

I phoned the AA and they sent someone out to take us home, with car; they tried to get replacement tyres, but couldn’t find any.

I phoned them early yesterday morning to see if they could help, and they arranged to send TyreServe to help. TyreServe phoned me back and promised to be here at 11:30, so I waited.

At 11:30 TyreServe phoned again and said they were on their way. 25 minutes later the TyreServe man in the van phoned to say he was about 15 minutes away. I asked where he was, and he said he had just left the M6. This concerned me, as we don’t have an M6 in Northern Ireland! I explained this to him; he sounded confused and promised that someone would get back to me. They never did.

I called the AA again, told them what had happened, received more empty promises, complained, waited until 14:00, and then got the train.

TyreServe suck!

This morning I phoned ATS who promised to fit my new tyres at 9:30, and they did. I also discovered that the AA used to ask ATS to fit tyres until they bought TyreServe.

I don’t post to this blog as frequently as I would like. There are many reasons why, but there is now 1 less than before.

I didn’t like editing in the browser, and I didn’t want to edit offline and then cut’n’paste. What I wanted was to be able to edit offline and then simply upload the finished file whenever I next connected. So, I wrote a short Perl script to do that for me, and this entry is my test case.

I haven’t been replaced, but Simon is using my chair and desk. He can drink my tea as well, if he wants.

It’s been more than a month since I’ve written anything here, and lots of things have happened in that time. I’ll like to promise that my blog will catch up with my life, but I’d break that promise tomorrow. Some events from the past may appear here in the future (especially the ones with pictures), but it will not be complete.

So I’m starting afresh. After some helpful advice from Marc (Don’t panic: I only took his advice, not his really bad drugs!) I have a new plan for my blog, starting tomorrow. I hope you like it.