…to throw myself out of a plane at 10,000 feet attached to some bloke called Bob and a parachute!

But that’s what I’m going to be doing on the 12th May all in aid of the Marie Curie Cancer Care charity. I decided that I wanted to do something for charity as I realised I had nothing as an adult for fundraising. Considering I have a fear of heights as well as strangely sweaty palms. it will certainly make for an interesting experience…

I’ll be getting pics and a video hopefully so everyone can have a good laugh at my expense, in the mean time, click the link below to donate!

Vista business finally arrived in my Microsoft Action Pack not so long ago and being the keen type of chappy I am I decided to slam it on the old beast and see what happened. Then I thought, nah screw it I’ll try installing on the computer instead 😉

Three hours later and with considerably less hair than I started with, I formatted the bloody thing and put XP back on. It appears that my uber cool FireMV cards are not fully supported yet and only two out of my three monitors work.

So either I have one monitor as a glorified photo holder and run Vista or I wait for upgraded drivers…

…and wait…

…and wait…

OK that didn’t go too well. FireFox install and import was straightforward as expected but I’ve got real problems with Thunderbird.

In Outlook I had some very detailed rules set-up to move emails, flag them or print them and looks like the filters, Thunderbird’s equivalent, is not as advanced so I’ll have to find a work around for that.

The import finally completed after about an hour but unfortunately showed all the emails, around 7,000 as unread which is a bit of a pain. In addition, the thirty odd mail accounts I had set-up didn’t get imported for some odd reason so I’m going to have set those back up again…

So far, not impressed…

OK tonight I have decided to try a little experiment. Basically I’m going to switch from using MS IE and MS Outlook to FireFox and Thunderbird for my web browsing and email for a short evaluation period. Lets say until this Sunday to give it a fair chance…

Those that know me will know that I am a big MS advocate but to be fair to all parties concerned I’m going to give Mozilla a crack of the whip in the metaphorical sense. So lets download these puppies….

Mozilla Thunderbird
OK I use Outlook to the extent where I only really use it for email. I don’t use the contact/diary etc all that much so losing those for the time being until I find a replacement won’t be a big heartache. Thunderbird claims to be able to import everything from Outlook so let’s give that a blast…

Upon installing TB, the first thing that popped up was did I want to import my mail? Damn straight I thought and gave the thumbs up. Granted I have a whopper PST file weighing in at a mighty 900MB so it’s going to be interesting to see how TB handles this. Ten minutes into the install and the progress bar has just shifted into life so this could take some time!

Read this today on the beeb website about the new Motorola advert where a young chap skims his new pebble phone across the ocean to a young lass. For reasons known only to themselves, Motorola decided it was necessary to warn users at the end of the advert that the phone wasn’t waterproof!!

Well thanks for that. I was just about to chuck my phone across the sea to see if it skimmed like the advert. I mean c’mon, do these manufacturers really think we’re that stupid to start chucking our mobiles in the water? Or is that they are worried about being sued by the the idiots who actually try this?

Oh and by the way, reading this blog will make you rich and irresistable to women*

* I’m lying…

…on so many levels 😉

http://www.nudisttrampolining.com

In Pharmacology, all drugs have two names, a trade name and generic name.

For example, the trade name of Tylenol also has a generic name of Acetaminophen.

Aleve is also called Naproxen.

Amoxil is also call Amoxicillin.

Advil is also called Ibuprofen.

The FDA has been looking for a generic name for Viagra. After careful consideration by a team of government experts, it recently announced that it has settled on the generic name of Mycoxafloppin.

Also considered were Mycoxafailin, Mydixadrupin, Mydixarizin, Dixafix, and of course, Ibepokin.

Pfizer Corp. announced today that Viagra will soon be available in liquid form, and will be marketed by Pepsi Cola as a power beverage suitable for use as a mixer. It will now be possible for a man to literally pour himself a stiff one.

Obviously we can no longer call this a soft drink, and it gives new meaning to the names of “cocktails”, “highballs” and just a good old-fashioned “stiff drink”. Pepsi will market the new concoction by the name of: MOUNT & DO.

Thought for the day: There is more money being spent on breast implants and Viagra today than on Alzheimer’s research. This means that by 2040, there should be a large elderly population with perky boobs and huge erections and absolutely no recollection of what to do with them.

Laugh? I almost cried 😀

Well the year is drawing to a close, thank God, and to be truthful I will view it with some mixed emotions…

It started well with me taking the company from a lowly sole trader to a more established Limited Company. I wanted to do this for several reasons but the main one being it gave me a lot more opportunity for growth and stability…

May bought a massive change for me when I purchased www.helmstore.com It was the largest singular investment I have made to the business and it’s also been the most successful! It was nerve wracking spending a considerable amount of money on something that I wasn’t 110% sure would succeed. As it happens, turnover has tripled with the acquisition and bought with it a huge increase in the customer base so I think it’s safe to say it all worked out quite nicely!

Growth in the hosting and design business was very strong throughout the year until November when a mini-disaster struck and very almost put us out of business. Those of you that host with us will know the full details but needless to say it was a very traumatic and stressful couple of weeks..

It was those events that really made me realise what a fantastic and loyal group of friends and customers I have as without them, I wouldn’t be writing this now…

So what’s planned for 2006?

Well there are several new sites launching for clients as well as the beginning of a project that I’ve been toying with for quite some time and I’m sure it will be a winner. I’m looking forward to the New Year and I’m pretty sure it’s going to be a good ‘un!!

Knowing full well how much I like Little Britain and obviously consuming too much of the Christmas spirit, one of my good friends Alex from www.redtigerdesign.com knocked up a quick graphic that he suggested I use on the redesigned hosting site…

Somehow I dont think it will be appropriate, but it’s good enough for the blog… 😉

You know I promised myself that I would make more of an effort this time round with the blog and I’ve started to slip already! I have a very good set of excuses though…

I’ve been working pretty damn hard on various client projects that are launching December/Jan 2006, I’ve given www.helmstore.com a face lift to fit the new company branding and to get people used to the new look for when v2 launches next year…

I’ve been running around like a headless turkey (very seasonal) ferrying people about for Christmas shopping and what seems like tonnes of food and gallons of drink, we have a total of five parties we are either hosting or going to over Christmas/New Year…

And I’m knackered to be honest! The one saving grace is that I’ve booked my holiday for July, two weeks in a villa on the costa brava with another eight members of the family. Some serious drinking going on there I can tell you! If you’ve ever met my mother-in-law you will know exactly what I mean…

So that’s the reason for slight blogging hiatus but then again I’m a a great believer in that if you have nothing interesting to say, don’t bother…

Looks like this entry just broke my own rule!