We all know that there are people in this world that are pretty stupid. Yet on occasion I still find myself lost for words having witnessed an act where the only possible words could be “wow… the human race really is doomed…”.
Yesterday Sarah and I went shopping in Brighton (an act of sheer stupidity in itself I grant you). We parked up, went shopping and returned to the car park where we joined the queue to pay for parking. The woman at the front inserted her ticket into the machine whereupon it displayed the message ‘Please try again’ and kept her ticket. The cause of this had been that she inserted the ticket the wrong way up. despite the clear instructions on the machine.
She pressed the intercom button and explained to the nice man (who she presumably thought lived inside the machine – wizard of oz stylie) that she couldn’t get her ticket back. He pressed a few magical buttons and out popped the ticket. “please try it again madam” he said.
This process repeated 3 times. On the third occasion he said he’d raise the exit barrier for her when she got there. He’d charge her for the ticket now, so could she please read him the numbers off of the ticket, and then press where it said ‘ticket loss’ on the top right of the screen. Rather than interpreting this as ‘read the ticket, then press the button’ she chose to interpret it as ‘hold the ticket up against the screen’. She did this so that her friend, the wizard inside the machine, would clearly be able to read the ticket for himself.
No-one in the queue could help, since we were all standing agape at her stupidity.
Eventually she figured it out, said “I hope you lot have better luck than I did” and wandered off.
We waited our turn, paid and returned to our car. As we drove out we passed her, about 30 feet from the ticket machine, presumably waiting for the little men under the car bonnet to bring her car to her.
I feel like my IQ has dropped just from having witnessed it.
Ok, so as promised, you can view the updated photo album (with less crap to trawl through) of our holiday in Devon by clicking here.
On a completely different topic, Sarah cleared out some of her stuff in the study yesterday and came across a literary work of mine from some time ago. I think I was probably around the age of 9 at the time. It’s series 2, episode 1 of the ‘James Carrot’ saga. I have no idea what happened to series 1, or if I ever wrote any more in this series. But anyway without further delay, Ladies and gentleman, I present ‘James Carrot – License Renewed’ by Robert Pannell aged 9 (approx)
(Click on the images to view larger)
(The missing line from the bottom of the page says “The story continues in the next book in the series”)
The contents of this post and, in fact, this entire website are © 2006 Rob Pannell. So don’t even think about nicking my wicked story…
The end of my time off work is nearing, and the depression that goes with it has struck. I’m feeling very lethargic today and am generally bumming about. We thought we might go swimming today, but I felt that it’d be a wate of money, because I’m only in the mood to float about and not actually put effort into things (like actually swimming or anything). Shortly after this we got very enthusiastic about going to the cinema as I have a £5 voucher for Odeon. We checked the website and it seems there is nothing even slightly worth watching.
My mood is not aided by the fact that yesterday we went to woolworth’s in Seaford where I bought ‘From Russia With Love’ for the Playstation 2 (which is an amazing game, I love it). And when the checkout girl scanned it, the age warning alarm beeped and she said “Are you over 16?”
Am I over 16? I’m 23 and married!
Thankfully she was the usual woolworths type of employee with the “not my department” attitude. Up to this point she hadn’t even taken the time to look at me, so I probably shouldn’t be too concerned about it. I did feel really crap for about an hour though.
Incidentally, another recent purchase for the PS2 is ‘Just Cause’. It too is seriously good and I’d reccomend it.
As fast as it came around, it has also gone around. Yes I’m back, annd have spectacularly failed to remember the things I wanted to blog about. I knew I should have written them down.
But fear not, as I have uploaded the photos to snapish. You can view them by Clicking here. If you don’t want to register with snapfish, then log in with the following:
email: guest@kaineworld.co.uk
password: photos
I haven’t reviewed or edited the photos at all, I literally got home and uploaded them. so once I have done so, I will update the album, and write a detailed blog of the holiday.
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome my sister, Louisa, to the blogging community. She has now followed my example and begun her own blog. Visit it at loustarsblog.blogspot.com.
Time until I go on holiday to devon:
(if it says 0, then I’m already gone!) and so until I return, I imagine this will be my final post.
But fear not, as I shall be packing a notepad and pen (and probably my laptop) and so will attempt to write a few entries while I am away, which I’ll post here on my return.
Don’t forget about me while I’m gone!
Just lately there has been a noticable increase to the amount of spiders and other insects we’ve found around the flat.
Just last night Sarah announced that there was “a huge spider in the bed!”. Thankfully it was actually tiny, so I directed it onto my hand and flung him out the window. Shortly afterwards a daddy long-legs (what is their real name?) got in and sarah made me crush it with my sudoku book. The downside to this was that it left a large flat insect laminated to the wall, which required cleaning. I argued that since I’d killed it, Sarah should clean it up. Obviously I lost.
And finally, this morning, there was a genuinely huge spider in the bath. If I’m feeling overly inhumane, I will usually flush it down the plughole. But there was no way this one would fit, so it was a glass and card job.
This phenomena is not restricted to my own household. In fact this entry was prompted by other people’s blogs today with similar experiences.
Maybe the insects are making their move to achieve world domination!
Or perhaps they’re just moving into our warm houses in time for the cold seasons.
I’ve had a couple of very bizarre dreams lately. I had the following one on Saturday morning while I was dozing:
I was at the offices where I work (which didn’t resemble the real life offices) and there was a huge crushing machine in the car park along with a big clawed crane. Phil (who is the IT manager in real life) gave me some very unclear instructions to crush stuff that was in the car park.
I merrily hopped into the machine and set about crushing things that were in the car park, i.e. the cars belonging to the staff. I was just about to crush Nicky’s rusty red banger of an Escort (Nicky doesn’t even drive in real life…) when I suddenly realized what I was doing, and that Phil had probably meant that I should crush the trailers etc which I knew to be for scrap and had been sitting in the car park for months (only in the dream, not real life (Confusing this, isn’t it!)).
I remember the intense feel of panic as I realised I had just mistakenly crushed half of the staff’s cars (including the car belonging to Andy, the Managing Director) and then a few minutes later, the panic dropped away and I just thought to myself “it doesn’t matter anyway, because none of this is real and I can just wake up” at which point I did.
I will only bore you with one more dream which I had last night, in one of the short periods of time that I was actually able to sleep:
I was staying with my old school friend James who was still living at his Mum’s house (he no longer does in real life). We decided to go for a walk, which we did, and his brother tagged along too. Near his house there was an airport where a boat-plane had just landed with a wedding couple in it. I had my camera with me so I decided I would take photos of it as it took of again. I waited around and the other two guys went home. After waiting ages I gave up and went back to their house, where they had decided we should go for a drive in their coach (!?!). So we got in the coach and drove past the airport again, where I spotted that the plane had got into takeoff position on the runway. I made James do a u turn so I could go take photos. We sat by the runway for ages then gave up and took a plane which James also owned (!?!) for a quick flight. We flew over the afore mentioned airport and I noticed that the other plane had started its takeoff. I jumped out and parachuted down next to the runway, landing on top of a stationary train (!?!) and whipping out my camera. I then got escorted from the airport by security and don’t remember anything beyond that.
When I woke up I thought that if I wanted a photo of a plane taking off so badly, and James had a plane, then why the heck didn’t I just arrange for him to take off and photograph him! – The dream ‘me’ is really stupid.
When people in the Bible had dreams that were this bizarre they tended to be of significant importance, and were often prophesies etc. So I figure that my dreams are just as weird as their’s, so must also be of significant importance… right?
Last night was Sarah and my first night as youth leaders at our church‘s evening youth group. It all went very well as far as we can tell. Sarah did a speaky bit on prayer, and I led the music. there was a few games and things too. All in all ‘the youth’ seemed to enjoy it.
We wont be doing it next week however, as we’re off on holiday to Devon. We’re going to Dawlish for 7 nights with my parents and grandparents (on my Dad’s side). Should be interesting as I’ve not been on a family holiday for years. I’m quite looking forward to it. It’ll be a good opportunity to give the wetsuits a decent trial, and get some bodyboarding in as well. So long as the weather is favorable, there’s a good chance of getting some decent waves. I’m sure we’ll be in the water a lot regardless though. I finish work on friday at 12pm then go home, grab the bags and head to Southampton (my parent’s place) for the night. Then it’s off to Devon bright and early Saturday morning.
I also have the following week off work as well. Nothing much planned so far. We hope to visit Bodium Castle one day as we’ve been meaning to for months. I’ve also pre-ordered a new game called ‘Just Cause‘ for my playstation. So that’ll fill some of the time. It’s only due for release on the 22nd, so I can’t play it before I go 
Well today things were slightly better at work. We weren’t able to do much until just after 12pm, at which point they let half the company go home again, luckily the systems used in my dept my dept were just about usable so we stayed on. By the end of the day, most of our systems were working and by Monday we should pretty much be normal again. So hopefully this is the 3rd and final part of the Office Server Saga.
One bright point came out of today at least. I went and played a few frames of Snooker with Paul, my supervisor (as we do from time to time). in the first and second frame he won (as per usual) although my standard of playing was much better than normal. On the third frame however, I stayed an average of around 20 points ahead for nearly the whole frame. At the end he caught me up, but I sunk the black and pipped him at the post.
Today was probably the best I’ve ever played, so I’m well chuffed.
I was still probably the worst player in the snooker hall, but by my own standards I did good.
Office story update: I’m now at home as pretty much everything has stopped working now, quite nice in a way, but annoying in other ways. There’ll be tons to do when we get back.
In other news, I can now announce that Sarah and I are going to see The Feeling at Brighton Dome in November. Sarah found it in the ‘whats on’ guide that the dome sends us every so often. I gave a very well acted “meh” sound to indicate my dissinterest and we got on with our lives. But I then booked tickets with the intention of taking Sarah as a birthday surprise, not actually telling her until we got there. Unfortunately the dome sent the tickets straight out (not a fortnight before the show like they normally do) and used recorded delivery. So when Sarah signed for the envelope this morning, the game was up.
I hate it when nice surprises go wrong…
