Apr 12 2007
Full credit goes to Nick (my brother) for finding, and passing on, the following pictures. (Thanks to Mum for passing it on to us)
They all appear to have been written by someone who either doesn’t know the answers, or possibly couldn’t care.
Click the link below to see the pictures.
Continue reading “Smart Arse Exam Answers”
Feb 18 2007
As readers may have noted in the past I have serious issues with the way many shops & businesses treat their customers in this country. (See Birthday Presents For Nick Customer Relations and One For The Milk Drinkers Out There… & various other moans from me ;> )
Recently, John fwded an e-mail he received, after ordering an item from a website.
Your CD has been gently taken from our CD Baby shelves with sterilized contamination-free gloves and placed onto a satin pillow.
A team of 50 employees inspected your CD and polished it to make sure it was in the best possible condition before mailing.
Our packing specialist from Japan lit a candle and a hush fell over the crowd as he put your CD into the finest gold-lined box that money can buy.
We all had a wonderful celebration afterwards and the whole party marched down the street to the post office where the entire town of Portland waved ‘Bon Voyage!’ to your package, on its way to you, in our private CD Baby jet on this day, Friday, January 26th.
I hope you had a wonderful time shopping at CD Baby. We sure did. Your picture is on our wall as ‘Customer of the Year’. We’re all exhausted but can’t wait for you to come back to CDBABY.COM!!
Thank you once again,
Derek Sivers, President
Whilst it may not appear very business-like, it made me smile, and if nothing else, certainly guarantees customers will remember the company the next time they consider who to place an order with.
Whilst we’re on the topic of communication, I should mention that it is possible that this blog will have a small amount of advertisements placed on it soon. Again, for anyone who is new to this blog, you can read a little of the history Google and I have had here
We’ll have to see how it goes, but I’m intending to use Oxado as a replacement for AdSense on all my other sites, as I need to start generating some income, whilst I continue to build up the affiliate sales side of things.
Jan 24 2007
And this will be a very slow post to load for any other dial up users out there, apologies…
Anyway, without much further ado, here are the pictures I promised a long time ago…
(Taken over Christmas, New Year & a little bit beyond, in Britain & Kazakhstan, on our, Nick’s & John’s camera)
(Click the link below, or the post’s title above to see the pictures, as I’m trying to save some bandwidth on the server)
Continue reading “A Little Later Than Intended Again…”
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Dec 30 2006
As you may have noticed, I’ve not yet posted anything about our trip to the UK, and now we’re already back in Astana. Hope to post more details over next week or so. Summary of our return journey is that Nick, Dad & I went via Istanbul, Almaty, Astana, and Ira went Moscow, Astana.
In case I miss posting tomorrow, Happy New Year to everyone.
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Dec 16 2006
We’ve been getting ready for our return to the UK, and we’re pretty much done now…
A huge thank you to our family and friends in Britain, who have kept me sane whilst I’m out here, and also to the family and new friends we have made out here in Kazakhstan.
We took Karra (our kitten) over to the in-laws, so she can stay with her mum and sister while we are away. Karra behaved a lot better in her carry bag this time, with only a few mystified miaows in the taxi 🙂
In 30 hours time Ira and I should have arrived in Cheltenham, where I’m staying with Dad & Nick for the first week, and then onto Swansea (well Clydach to be precise) on the Saturday/Sunday (23rd/24th December) with Nick & Ira to see Mum.
Really looking forward to catching up with family and friends; most of our evenings are planned out already in Cheltenham, so hoping we can just kick back and relax during our time in Clydach.
Irina has been allowed some unpaid leave from work, but only received the permission quite recently, by which time, the flights I’m booked on were full, so she is returning to Kz one day earlier, and going via Moscow, whereas I’ll be dropping into Istanbul on the way there and back.
By the time New Year hits us, Nick, Dad, me & Irina should all be in Astana and I’m hoping they’ll enjoy seeing Astana (it will be Nick’s first winter over here, and Dad’s first time ever.)
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Dec 07 2006
And I’ve been very bad at posting recently. Apologies to anyone still reading this 😉
Irina has just returned from Moscow, Karra is fine and still biting us randomly.
Mum had her birthday on the 5th, but her presents and card didn’t arrive until yesterday, and one still hasn’t made it 🙁
I hope to see Tom and Walton before I leave for my Christmas break, and Tom#2 (‘pilot Tom’) has been in contact to confirm he is fine, but wasn’t able to meet up with us recently due to his work commitments.
It is quite late now, so heading to bed.
Oh and Dad & Nick have received their visas, so it looks like everything is good to go for their visit over here for New Year 🙂
Hope all who read this do so in good health…
Nov 17 2006
for the vast majority of my occasional readers.
It is mainly here so I don’t need to go digging the paperwork out each time I need to check flight info.
These are the flight times for when I return to the UK – sadly without Ira (her work won’t give her any time off until she has been there 6-12 months 🙁 )
Airline : Turkish Airlines
Date of flight to UK : 17 December
Leave Astana 03:30 – Flight 1355
Arrive Istanbul 05:40
Leave Istanbul 08:30 – Flight 1979
Arrive Heathrow 10:30
Date of flight returning to KZ : 30 December
Leave Heathrow 07:55 – Flight 1982
Arrive Istanbul 13:40
Leave Istanbul 16:35 – Flight 1354
Arrive Astana 01:45 (31st December)
Airport Codes
Astana – TSE
Istanbul – IST
Heathrow – LHR
Times that show ??:?? need to be updated – the ticket only mentions departure times, not arrival…
Nick (my brother) and Dad will be coming with me on the return journey, and staying in KZ until 9th January 🙂 :> :] :}
[edit] All times updated
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Nov 10 2006
I woke up this morning, looked out the window, and it was snowing 🙂
There were a few flakes a couple of weeks ago, but this was proper fluffy snow.
Dad is off to Paris this weekend with Jan, and hopes to be buying a house in Evesham soon.
Mum and John have hopefully sold the house in St Thomas, and are settling in nicely at Clydach. In case you missed the posts on it, and ignore the links in the sidebar on the right, you can visit John’s site here. Please be aware some of his images are not for minors.
Really looking forward to visiting family and friends this Christmas in the UK, and to Nick (my brother) and Dad coming back with us to celebrate New Year here in Astana.
If you don’t get this post’s title, I’m guessing you’ve never heard a town crier…
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Nov 09 2006
Got a new motherboard for Losha’s PC, installed it (whoever designed his PC case needs to be taken outside and slapped silly though), it is working fine, just finishing a few stress tests to make sure I’m not called out to fix it again :>
Losha is hopefully coming with us to the UK this Christmas, which I’m looking forward to.
Nick (my brother) and my Dad are hopefully coming to Kazakhstan with us, when we return from the UK. (Approx dates in UK 18-30 December, split 50/50 between Cheltenham and Swansea).
I’ve almost surpassed the $100 mark with my AdSense account.
[edit]
Looks like Losha won’t be coming now, never mind, maybe next time we go to the UK…
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Nov 07 2006
Apologies. I’ve been a little distracted re-building a PC for a friend. I had everything just right, all working, and secure (he had stability & security issues that couldn’t be sorted out without a re-install of XP). The final update was to bring the BIOS up to date – it had had a few revisions in 14 months. Unfortunately, for the first time ever, I appear to have killed the BIOS whilst flashing it. The board is supposed to have a 2nd BIOS that gets used if the first is fried, but it hasn’t come into play, no amount of keypresses or floppy disks with binary images & flashing programs have helped. As I did the damage, I’m using up the last of my birthday money to replace the motherboard. Except, of course, that particular model isn’t stocked any more, so I’m trying to find a suitable upgrade for him.
On a more positive note, my brother and dad are hopefully coming over to visit us, around New Year time, and Losha, may be coming with us to the UK for Xmas 🙂
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