Okay I'm sorry for recalling The Bay City Rollers at this (or any other) time of the day, but I promise you this is a rare occasion so I feel it may warrant it.

Last Friday my prized 1993 Mitsubishi 3000GT VR-4 finally through in the towel with a broken (or near as needed) water pump. The engine temperature was through the roof, at one stage the big red CHECK ENGINE light was on, and by the end of the morning there was lots of water and steam in the engine bay. This was not a Cool Threads moment.

The local specialist Japanese import garage estimated 6 hours labour just to get to the water pump, as you can see, not much space is wasted in the engine bay. 6 hours labour + parts + labour + 6 hours labour == lots and lots more money. The car had just come from the garage the day before (for totally unrelated, but still expensive) servicing. It was time for an big decision.

I used a Japanese import garage for servicing ( www.tuningjapanese.co.uk -- sorry guys I won't be need your services anymore!). My Mitsubishi, however, hadn't come directly from Japan. I bought my headturner in 2000 form a friend in Dallas, Texas, when I was working for Sun in California. I brought the car home via Galviston, Texas and Southampton (England!) a year or so later, and I like to think it had been a head turner ever since (although my girlfriend absolutely hates it!).

So after 8 years could I really bare to be parted from COLSVR4?

The licence plate should be read as COL'S VR-4 and not COL SVR4 (which was never intended and was only pointed out by someone much more nerdy than I!).

Aside from the emotional attachment, we also had to deal with

• an MOT with only 12 left days to run (making it less attractive to potential buyers)
• a leaking/faulty waterpump (making it a lot less attractive to potential buyers)
• flaking, formerly chrome-plated, alloys thanks to 7 too many years of UK road salt!
• faded rear spoiler, thanks to 7 too many years of Texas sunshine!

So although it was difficult, I took the decision to call it a day, and list on eBay. Lots of people were as gobsmacked that I was selling up as that I was selling up on eBay, but I figured I'd reach far more potential buyers, could push to close the sale before the MOT expired and would hopefully avoid the time-waster agencies that seem to plague all classified sales in the UK.

This was the quickest listing I've every completed from deciding to list, taking photos, writing description and having the auction live (okay it was about 90 minutes from the last photo being taken to the auction being live, but this was also the most expensive item I've ever listed, so on a auction-writing/auction-value basis, I think we have a winner.

We also had a winner on the auction, just over 48 hours after listing we had a Buy-It-Now and within another 48 hours the car was gone!

Woh, that was quick! What can I say? It's a fast car!

A word about the buyer/winner (you win, now hand over the money!!). David and Greg came up from Southampton on Tuesday teatime, although like the car, they hadn't originally come from Southampton. You could tell this from their accents - clearly Polish (much better at speaking English than I am at Polish though).

David was the mechanic, Greg was the builder. Luckily Greg took a proverbial back seat and left David to fiddle with the coolant system, and after a 15 minutes of fiddling the way only people who know what they're doing can fiddle, Greg reckoned everything would be okay. They paid a deposit and we agreed they pay the balance and remove the car the following afternoon.

Not unusual, well maybe not but such a car sale in England would have by this stage typically seen the buyer sucking their teeth and offering 20% less than they'd already agreed, given the car's 'nick'.

These guys didn't even look at the tyres let alone start kicking them!

True to his word David the mechanic arrived on Wednesday afternoon, with another Polish mate, a builders lorry with 5 tonne hydraulic crane and a large wadd of cash. Once the money side of things was out the way, I explained a few little idiosyncrasies of the car and then the fun of getting the car onto the lorry started.

The car was pulled up along side the lorry and straps were threaded through the alloys(!). The lorry's stabilizers were lowered and then David started unpacking the crane. Everything was going well until a couple of pints of oil spewed out of one of the crane's elbows. He said a word that might have been Polish (but I understood the sentiment!). And then came one of those questions you know you'll probably never be asked again.

"Do you know we'd be able to borrow a fork lift truck from?"

Lucky for David we were about a mile from a busy industrial estate (an industrious industrial estate?) with builders merchants, couriers and a company that makes fork lift trucks.

Lucky for David's mate he had to drive the car (slowly) behind the lorry (I think he was trying not to act overly chuffed, given how cheesed off David was about his crane!).

So the last I saw of COLSVR4 was it driving down my road (which beats leaving on the back of a builder's lorry). I spoke to the Poles the following morning and they were already in Germany, enroute to Poland. Clearly someone was happy to turn a blind health-and-saftey-eye and help them load the car.

At least it's off on a new adventure, it beats selling it to 'some guy' in 'Somewhereton', 'Nowhereshire'!

For the time being I'm going to stick with just my just my daily drive (a 1998 VW Passat 1.9TDi - chalk meet cheese!). Next on my spare car shopping list is probably going to be something like this or this but not like this. Meantime I've heard there are some bargains to be had on the NASDAQ.

Every so often you just need to switch off, go somewhere else and get away from it all.

 

So we (me and her) are popping off to California and Texas for a couple of weeks of not being here. Texas is already planned (friend with water-front-condo + 7 days = batteries fully recharged). California on the other hand is proving a toughy.

 

I used to live in Mountain View (I arrived in town just a few months before the bubble did what bubbles tend to do) so I've seen quite a bit of California, enough to know that you can't fit California into a week (not by a long way!).

 

We're already booked up in San Francisco (in one of the Joie de Vivre Hotels for four nights) where I'm told we have to go to Alcatraz and drive over the Golden Gate Bridge. Not that I mind doing it again, I have actually been to Alcatraz around five times (on at least one occasion I selected a foreign language audio tour just to change the goal posts). 

 

I've been using a package called Knapsack for MacOS to start to get the inventory sorted out. So far far SFO we've got:

• Breakfast or Dinner at Top of the Mark
• Alcatraz ( and Angel Island if the Combo Tour is running)
• Telegraph Hill
• Helicopter Tour (I had no idea these even existed until I'd left CA)
• Seaplane Tour (the cheaper/maybe more romantic version of the above)
• Shopping (Apple Store, REI, NorthFace, Fireside Camera, Filmore St, Chesnut St, Somewhere else I don't recall)
• Alamo Square (To take another shot of Steiner's Painted Ladies)

• Twin Peaks
• Coit Tower
• Baker Beach
• Golden Gate Park
• And I suppose we'd better go to Fisherman's Warf (is the bush man still there?)

There's lots of other places I vaguely recall from 8 years ago, although I can't always remember the names of places -- that said, Google Maps has a great feature called Street View so I can navigate with street-level imagery, its so cool!

 

After our 4 nights in SFO, the jury is still out on exact plans. We've got a hotel booked in Half Moon Bay the evening before we fly to Texas (so we're close enough to the airport). At the moment  Knapsack looks like this:

 

Originally I'd planned to squeeze in a tour out to Yosemite, then over Tioga Pass to Mono Lake (which I don't ever recall going to) then down through Lone Pine and Bishop towards Sequoia and then over to Santa Barbara and up PCH. Then several things dawned on me:

• We spent a trip to Scotland a few years ago just driving everyday and hardly left the car
• 55 mph(!)
• Tioga Pass will so not be open by the time we're there (and I can't belive it can take two months to plough clear)

 

So the plan is to spend a day North of SFO, spend Tuesday head down to my old haunt on Tuesday (I need to pop into Frys -- luckily my other half was introduced to Frys a couple of years ago in Houston and it went down well!).

 

Then we'll be heading probably towards Morro Bay (Santa Barbara might be just too far) before a leisurely cruise up PCH. Hopefully will fit in  Hearst Castle and endless stops on the beach, its looking like Big Sur for Wednesday night, to be sure to get to Half Moon Bay in good time Thursday.

 

BTW I've been using Google Earth almost exclusively for finding stop over places (B&B's and Motels), the links to travelocity.com traveller reviews are indispensable.

 

Anyway if you have any ideas for a pair of thirty something Brits visiting CA to get away from it all for a little bit let me know!

Yesterday I mailed an old friend (who sold me lots of Sun equipment when I worked in my previous job around 10-15 years ago). My mail client's address book is so old, it picked up the company's old domain name, and the email bounced back. Nothing unusual there!

As usual, for me, I only glanced at the Undeliverable mail and thought it was reporting that my friend no longer worked at the reseller; it was actually just telling me that the domain name was non existent. As it happens it wasn't relevant -- the end result was the same.

So being the inquisitive sort, I typed his name into my search engine of choice only to find this:

http://www.justgiving.com/dermotffrench

link to a justgiving.com webpage set up, in his memory:-( Mail servers aren't supposed to delivery this sort of message!!

Although we'd not spoken for sometime (he'd last been in touch when he'd sponsored me earlier this year) he was one of those low maintenance friends who always remembered more details about your life than you ever did his! So at the very least all I can do is remember him, and suggest that you don't lose touch with good friends!

RIP dppf.

PS: The chosen charity, CLICL Sargent is one dppf was keen to support, they are the UK's leading children's cancer charity, supporting children, young people and their families through cancer every step of the way. December is childhood cancer awareness month.

This next move is probably going to result in one of two outcomes:

• Realisation that the Statcounter code in my blog is fibbing big time
• Any good will I have left from the postroom boys going out the window - before my christmas shopping from Amazon turns up

but I reckon those two are mutually exclusive, plus the end justifies the means, so here goes.

Yesterday I got an email from a colleague to say that they would:

"Much rather donate money to Charity this year ... so, please don't feel the need to send me a [christmas] card"

This got me thinking, as at home we've already got lots of christmas cards ready bought and just waiting to be written (I know this because I hauled the five christmas boxes down from the loft on Sunday evening), how can I make a charitable donation and still continue to send and receive cards? It hit me when I was pulling off the M3 on the way into the office at 06h25 Friday morning (not much goes on up there at that time of day!):

For every card I receive at my work address, rather than sending a card back in return, I'll make a donation these charities:

• Home Start - the charity supported by Sun here at Guillemont Park via our reception area gift-tree giving programme. They provide support for families with young children in over 337 communities across the UK and with Forces families in Germany and Cyprus.
• North Hampshire Hospital's Early Pregnancy Assessment Unit (NHH Charities (EPAU)) - which does what it says really, but like most parts of the NHS is woefully underfunded

To make life interesting (like it needs to be!) the donation will depend upon where the card arrives from:

• Hand delivered/internal mail: 10p
• Received from UK: 23p
• Received from EU: 44p
• Received from rest of world: 50p

So apart from a nominal amount for hand delivered cards, the donation matches the postal cost to return a card.

Just to be crystal clear, this is lieu of you getting a card back from me in return, I don't want you taking me off your own christmas card lists!

Now for the not so small print: I don't have deep pockets and short arms, but I'm going to place a maximum donation of £50 (UKP) to each charity, but whatever the final figure, it should (if it's > $25) be doubled with the help of the Sun Microsystems Foundation Trust.

So if you work at Sun in the UK, I'm sure you can dig out my mailstop details. Otherwise, whether you're a Sun employee, a reseller, an existing, current or previous customer, a former work-colleague, a friend or relative(!) or an unrelated blog reader who's maybe received this permalink in viral form, please send christmas cards to me at our UK Head Office Address, and mark them FAO "ColinJ" -- don't forget the "J".

I'll be sure to keep you updated on how the postroom relationship breaks down!

Seasons Greetings (as per your locale!)

I had been planning introducing my youngest to you all in more fun way (I was going to show you his entry on kittenwars.com -- yes, my youngest is a black'n'white cat by the name of Eric) but of course he had to spoil all of that this morning...

When I came down into the kitchen at around 6am this morning (enroute to the office to take over from the Solution Centre nightshift) I found the chicken my girlfriend had taken out of the freezer to defrost intime for tonights dinner, sat on the kitchen floor, ripped open and half scoffed.

There are two cat's in our household, the aforementioned and Lita (the big sister). Lita (so I'm assured) would never get up on the kitchen work surface -- in fact Eric's only been known to do it twice in his two years!

OK, make that threee times; so nobody saw him? Nevermind, I just use father's intuituion and came to a quick decision, given he was caught with a bird in his mouth at the weekend (and then propmtly made a run for it, with the bird, under the hole in the fence) Eric was clearly at fault! He was quickly and quitely shown the relevant evidence, and then quitely told not to touch anything like that again (I recall a little wigging of the index finger was involved) then he was put down and promptly tried to run out into the back-garden. Except the cat flap was still locked! Well it made me laugh anyway!

Eric, this is everyone. Everyone, this is Eric.

PS
Before you ask, Lita was named by my girlfriend after the WWE erm.. performer: Lita. Although she is often mistaken for being the namesake Reading FC's star forward Leroy Lita!

Eric, on the other hand, is named after Slowhand himself Eric Clapton.

Which ISP? Is that an age old geek question or what? Actually these days I'm not sure it can be limited to a geekquest anymore!

In the UK, the Broadband market has recently started to see a glut of free offerings, from the likes of Carphone Warehouse (mobile phone retailer), Orange (mobile phone network provider), and now Sky (satelitte TV provider and part of the Murdoch chain). As you'd expect all of these have at least as many strings as your standard apron, but as a Sky subscriber (I bought into Sky+ (PVR) when the UK PVR market wasn't quite mature enough) I can now choose from:

• 2Mb (upto) (capped @ 2GB) FOC (but with a £40 activation fee)
  
• 8Mb (capped @ 40GB) £5/month (activation fee dropped to £20)
  
• 16Mb (uncapped) £10/month (with no activation fee)
  
• 8Mb (capped @ 70GB) £17/month (but with activation fee back up to £40 eh?)
  

at this point I should probably add that I belive the area I live has a 1MB limit -- the fact we can even get ADSL is something the whole neighbourhood is ever so grateful. When we were shopping for houses ADSL availability was high on my shopping list, and just as we found our ideal property (which we bought!) BT kindly acknowledged they were due to drop their 5km-from-exchange restriction, which was timely.

I've been a happy Pipex customer since around 2002 (I moved back to the UK from Silicon Valley where I'd had a fine broadband connection until the ISP went bust). In my time with Pipex, I've had to phone them only a couple of times and I've never had a problem with the connection. I only moved away from them once, when I moved to a rented property that was already connected to NTL for phone and cable, so I opted for them for my broadband (cable modem) and that too was more or less troublefree, and obviously wonderfully, for the day, fast at 700Mbps).

Currently I pay way too much for my uncapped 1Mbps service from Pipex (something like £23.99/Month!).

I'm sure looking at this in black and white you might think it was obvious to follow price, but as a customer of both Sky and Pipex, I know I've had no problems contacting or dealing with Pipex, whereas Sky, being significantly larger, are sometimes frustrating to deal with (like many large teclos); I've had many heated discussions over various issues with Sky -- do I really want to risk my broadband connection simply on the basis of price?

Doubtlessly overseas readers will be oh so eager to let me know just how little their local ADSL costs!

Thinking this through, I think I'd rather check out the ISP's taking part in the BBC's Multicast Trials and get a little more for my money;a static IP address might help too ;-) It's probably appropriate to invest some time looking through the excellent ADSLGuide.org.uk. And when I'm through with that, I'll start shopping around for new gas and electricity suppliers!

Back in May The Stroke Assocation  held their annual Thames Bridges Bike Ride crossing  14 bridges covering a gentle 32 mile route from   London's City Hall, through Old London Town, and then along the  towpaths of the River Thames, through Richmond Park and onto Hampton Court.

For the third year running my girlfriend and I took part, this time we were again joined by her brother who I'm pleased to say  managed to finish this time (last year he cried off after riding 20 miles with chronic back pain, not a common sight to see a 6 feet something tree surgeon unable to carry his own bike up steps!).

I was also pleased to make it home without any punctures, Adrian picked one up at a break-stop, which resulted in an hour off the road and Nicola picked one up between platforms 2 and 11 of Waterloo Station

As usual it was a great day out for a brilliant cause – raising money to help the 250,000 people who are currently living with stroke in the UK.

And for the third year running colleagues throughout Sun, friends, family and this year even resellers helped in the riasing money element of the day. Along with Gift Aid and help from The Sun Microsystems Foundation we managed to raise £770.80.

Thanks very much to all of you!