I don’t run any AV software on my Mac what so ever. While I’m sure at some point that I’ll have to bite the bullet and permanently have some running I don’t feel that time has come yet. I do however feel that it’s my duty to check my machine so that I don’t pass something on to another windows user that I’ve received from a windows user. I therefore decided that today I should scan my machine; it’s a decision I soon regretted as it took very nearly 6 hours!

Scan started: Tue Apr 18 17:15:00 2006

– summary –
Known viruses: 51004
Engine version: 0.88
Scanned directories: 50506
Scanned files: 254934
Infected files: 0
Data scanned: 29062.38 MB
Time: 21480.067 sec (358 m 0 s)

Went to Leeds yesterday to carry out our MySpace gig challenge. While there we couldn’t help noticing that it was an area of outstanding natural beauty. I would therefore like to announce the first AndyBellOnline.com award for areas of natural beauty goes to the whole of Yorkshire, because this is not just a Leeds thing, Wakefield and Castleford also appear to have a complete lack of ugly women. Now I know that there used to be ugly women in Yorkshire because I’ve met some but can only assume that a new government re-homing policy has moved them elsewhere, or perhaps the national trust has come along and carried out some restoration work. All I know it that it was good.

I recommend that if you ever have any spare time on your hands you pop into Yorkshire and take a look. To make the trip even more worthwhile you should definitely try and see my new favourite band – The Good Die Young.

Anyway the holiday is nearly over, back to work for me tomorrow so I suppose I’d best go and make the most of my last few hours of freedom. Toodle Pip.

Not quite sure what I’ve done, but at some point during the night I’ve managed to twist my back. I woke up about 4 times in pain and so far have been struggling. Luckily I’m going out for a few beers (yet again) in Leeds so will just make sure that I drink enough to deaden the pain!

A lot has happened since I last posted on Wednesday I’m quite confident of that, now if you were to ask what exactly has happened, well that’s a different matter. I have vague recollections.

I’m fairly confident that I spent most of Thursday sat out in the garage with my car on the jack while I cleaned my wheels are serviced my brakes. Even though I polished the wheels they don’t look much different, but hopefully it will now be easier to wash the brake dust off before it gets too ingrained into the alloy.

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Well I hate the winter because nothing ever happens, but now that the finer weather is here things are not much better. It used to be easy in winter, someone would ask if I wanted to do something and I’d say “yeah, no problem”, now I don’t know if I’m coming or going, I’ve got bowls, gigs to go to, and places and people to see. I’ve had to resort to writing everything in my diary. Yes I do mean an actual diary, one with pages onto which I write with a pen, I’ve tried using my phone to store things and it’s a pain, and I use Outlook at work for all my meetings and iCal at home for things I need to remember so it just wasn’t working.

Hopefully I’ll be a bit more organised now, it all came about because I had a bit of a scare earlier in the week when I thought that I was double booked, wasn’t quite sure how I was going to be in London and Newcastle at the same time. Luckily this wasn’t the case. Things aren’t much better this week because tomorrow night I’m in Boro to watch a battle of the bands competition, then up first thing on Friday to go down to Leeds for an all day session with some Uni mates before needing to be back in Darlo at midday for a meal at the stadium before the football.

Luckily its my last day today, six days to do with as I like, I’m cleaning my alloys tomorrow and servicing my brakes and on Sunday if I’ve recovered from the previous two days of drinking I’m going to wash, clay, polish, and wax my car. Then I’m gonna clean that carpets and windows. Its ages since I’ve had a nice clean shiny polished car.

Well my car has had to go to car hospital today for its 36,000 mile service and MOT, its been acting a little strangely recently as well, some mornings its not starting very well so hopefully they will be able to sort that out too. I was expecting to be getting a dodgy little 1.2 Clio as my courtesy car, but no I’ve got Renault Megane 1.9dCI, and it’s a beast. I don’t want to give it back; in fact I don’t think I will!

They’ve just phoned and it seems that the rear axel bushes are damaged and the headlights are misaligned, both of which are MOT failures. Luckily the rear bushes are covered under warranty so that’s getting fixed for free. But to realign the headlights it’s going to cost me £18 + vat. Well this is a new thing to me, but how on earth can the headlights become misaligned, maybe its French thing, my last two cars have been old Fiestas and I’ve never had any problems with those. Also it turns out that my key fob battery is getting flat, well wuppy doo I’ll buy a new one when it is actually flat, cos I’m not paying £8 + vat for something that still works. Finally it seems that my brakes are binding, to sort those out they want to charge £60 + vat, well by now you can probably guess what I said. No thanks I’ll sort those out myself. Infact Shutty can come round and I’ll give him a lesson in stripping down brakes so that he can fix his own brake binding issues. Its certainly not hard enough to expect me to pay £60 + vat.

The worrying thing is that it seems as though they’ve serviced it and MOT’d it by ten past ten. Which means that there not exactly doing much for the £300 its going to cost me.

Its been a while since I bought some new cds so figured that today would be a good day to refresh the cds in my car. I therefore bought the following:

1. Be Your Own Pet [2006]
2. Delays – You See Colours [2006]
3. Embrace – This New Day [2006]
4. My Chemical Romance – Life On The Murder Scene [2006]
5. Stereophonics – Live From Dakota [2006]
6. The Streets – Hardest Way To Make An Easy Living [2006]
7. The Vines – Vision Valley [2006]
8. The Vines – Winning Days [2004]
9. Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Show Your Bones [2006]

Its been a while since I posted so thought I would jot down a few thoughts in this quiet time. I’m not feeling very well at the moment since I drank a little too much yesterday and didn’t quite eat enough. I’m making up for it now though by eating my lunch already. Eating two lunches probably isn’t going to be very good for my training, but neither will the beers I’m having tomorrow so why worry.

On the subject of getting fat, apparently research suggests that women get fat when they move in with a partner. Well isn’t this a life changing piece of news, why exactly would researchers want to look into this. There are lots of things that could be researched so why can’t researchers find something a little more beneficial.

Anyway that’s your lot for the time being, going to go and catch up on some reading. But before I go let me tell you a story (thanks to Simon for sending it to me, oh yeah also thanks to Simon for the £50 I’ve just been sent by Reg Vardy).

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