How was your day? (Random off topic chat)

I had my car washed today. Usually I just sponge off the mud but I thought I'd get it done properly, not least of all because on Sunday the windscreen was hit by an insect the size of a small moose that smeared a wide trail three quarters of the way up the window.

I'd forgotten how clean my car could look. It's green! It's actually green!

Four whole days off work now. Bliss, especially as I got told today this dull & stressful temp job might be extended for another month till the end of May. Already had 2 extensions. I only signed up for 2 weeks originally! I feel like I'm stuck in a sort of Groundhog Day, but sadly there's no-one nearly as good looking as Andy Karl involved!

Facing up to a busy weekend. Off to Wolverhampton tomorrow, trip on the Flying Scotsman on Saturday, going to see the tall ships on Sunday then football Monday. Expecting to be shattered at the end of it

Sanded down garage door, front door and meter cupboards today, right handed. And as I'm left handed, it wasn't pretty to watch, it looked all crack-handed! I broke a finger on my left hand a couple of weeks ago swatting a fly in my lounge (hate flies so it had to go. Swatted, missed and finger came down hard on the sideboard. Big pain). Tomorrow the painting starts. Not me though, I'll be on tea making duty and providing chat, support and encouragement for my partner!

So learner drivers are no longer going to have to learn to reverse around a corner, but will be tested on using a sat-nav.

Well, that's a relief.

(So what if the sat-nav tells them to go backwards round the corner?)

It's one thing to keep pace with changing times, but what about the loss of skills? I'm sure satnavs are invaluable for some drivers/types of driving, but I try to walk or use public transport and don't use a satnav when I do drive; however, if travelling on an unfamiliar route or for a longer distance, I plan my journey using maps. If people no longer use maps, they won't learn how to use them and will have no sense of direction, so will also have no idea if or when their satnav tells them to do something they would otherwise know to be inappropriate or dangerous - or even if they've accidentally chosen a different place with the same name as their objective.

I've been a passenger with drivers using a satnav so I'm not a Luddite, but still think it's not a good idea to hand over all route-finding responsibility to a device and to have no idea where you actually are and are going.

Given the number of clonking punctuation & grammar errors that turn up at the exam board I temp for, I can well believe that the college did manage to be rated "good"!

I've been looking for a new satnav as my old TomTom is now so ancient that its battery self-discharges in a few hours. I've wanted to replace it for a long time, but the only feature I need a satnav for is itinerary planning and for some reason TomTom dropped that feature from their entire range for several years and only recently reintroduced it. I was starting to think about switching to Garmin but I'm so used to the TomTom way of displaying things the differences would bug me too much.

So I went to Halfords to try some out. Wow, they've really dumbed down the interface, but at the same time they've managed to make it far harder to get anything done. It's as if they thought that having too many things on the screen at once would frighten people, so now some basic functions are hidden four levels deep in a menu tree that you have to commit to memory to navigate and pull off the road to use. What the hell, TomTom?

So now I'm wondering whether to stick with my old unit, even though it sometimes loses all its settings, displays weird artifacts on the screen, and occasionally picks some random point I've just passed on my journey and then calculates the journey time as if I need to go back to that point while still displaying the correct instructions. Do I spend around £180 for a satnav that will actually nav, or do I put up with one that will sometimes display a location that's nowhere near the one I'm at? Decisions, decisions.

Try dressing as a nun and see if the bus tour gives you a discount.

Just checked all the inspection hatches of the septic tank. All appears to be well.

You're welcome.

Really hacked off to reach theatre where evening performance is advertised as 90 mins, straight through, only to find they've added an interval AND the running time has lengthened, meaning it finishes fully 30 mins later. This is just dire with Sunday trains & this venue has previous for the same offence; I just didn't expect them to make a habit of it.