Molly is Two

Happy Birthday Molly.

Apple MacBook Pro Kernal Panic and Logic Board Failure

I really like Apple, but every single laptop I've owned (Milhouse 2000-2003
, SuperTed 2003-2005, Elwood 2005-2007, Jake 2007-present) has gone
wrong and had to have a 'logic board' replacement.

'Jake' is in for repair at the moment along with Alex's machine which
also has logic board failure. Justina's iBook has had two logic board
replacements in three years.

AppleCare is such an expensive but needed protection plan.

Thetrainline.com is excellent

I never thought I would write a post commending thetrainline.com but I
am. Last year they were rubbish, virtually impossible to call when
there was a problem, tricky to obtain tickets from and their customer
service was nearly as bad a certain gas company.

This year they have a website that works, I can collect tickets from
my local station rather than from a machine at a station ten miles
away, and the whole process of booking with them at short notice is
excellent through the web.

Tomorrow I am in Norwich, if I had of bought the ticket from National
Express East Anglia it would have cost £36.70 return. The very same
train journey with thetrainline.com was £6 each way, an amazing £12
plus a £1 booking fee. The company emailed me a reference code which
I simply typed into the machine at Witham station and tickets were
spat out at me.

A 100% improvement by thetrainline.com in comparison to last years
complete shambles.

Yorkie Chocolate Genius Advertising

The 'not for girls' campaign has been around for a few years now but
is simply one of the best marketing campaigns ever. Blokes buy it
because it is great chocolate aimed at them, girls buy it because they
are not meant to.

The limited edition pink Yorkie for girls was pure genius.

Justina bought a regular Yorkie (again!) today to share with me. I
pointed out that she should not have done that as the product clearly
states she should not have it. "I like breaking the rules". Genius.

Blog spam reduction Spam Karma 2

I've been using Spam Karma 2 for a couple of years now to fend off
spam on this Wordpress blog.

Every now and again a spam comment gets past SK2 as some cheeky
spammer writes a direct comment specifically for the page on my blog
that they want to target traffic from.

I have a new strategy for the rare spam comment that gets past SK2,
but I still wish all spam commenters would go take a long walk on a
short pier.

Norwich Taxi 01603 700 700

I've been travelling to Norwich for nearly two years and have used
most of the city based cab firms, and all have let me down except for
one.

Today I needed three cabs to get around and the only company I'll call
is 1st Gold Star. 01603 700 700, they were a couple of minutes early
to pick me up each time.

I often use this blog to moan about rubbish service so I thought I'd
commend a well run efficient company that lives up to it's name.

Little Chef built their restaurants the wrong way round

Sitting in the Little Chef in Acle I've often wondered why Little Chef
face the roads they service. Surely the last thing a motorist wants to
see when taking a break is look out through a window onto cars and
lorrys thundering past.

In Acle if the kitchen moved to the seating area, and the seating
moved to where the kitchen area is then customers would look out of
windows overlooking a small woodland,, and fields at most other Little
Chef branches.

Little Chef, move your windows.