I must have missed the announcement that today was National Dickhead Driver Day, but I've seen some fine examples of idiot motoring this morning - so well done to all concerned.

For those of you who don't know, I commute by car from Yeovil to Sunbury three days a week; a journey which normally takes me about two hours. So naturally I've had plenty of opportunity to observe the nation taking enthusiastically to this special day.

The first example this morning happened within five minutes of leaving the house; carved up on a mini-roundabout by a Subaru doing (at a conservative estimate) 50mph in a 30mph zone. Excellent start.

But the award for the day has to go to the driver I witnessed on the A303 at about 07:15 this morning on the single carriageway eastbound just before Chicklade.

I was three cars behind a lorry travelling at (an admittedly frustrating) 50mph. A car five positions behind me decided to overtake the entire queue while going around a blind corner. Sheer genius.

I’m looking forward to the journey home this evening to see if this mornings efforts can be outdone.

While I was out at work today, and while Bec was briefly sorting things out upstairs, my nearly two year old son Zak took it upon himself to remap half my keyboard to various squiggles and symbols that not even Prince could pronounce, with a permanent marker pen!

Ahh, the joys of parenthood...

Customer: Worcester sauce crisps please
Shopkeeper: Sorry can't, it's off the shelves; cancer scare.
Customer: Oh right, Chinese Chicken Wings?
Shopkeeper: Ah that's the same. Cancer scare
Customer: Hamburger Relish?
Shopkeeper: Cancer scare
Customer: Sausage and Mash?
Shopkeeper: Cancer scare
Customer: Cottage Pie?
Shopkeeper: Yes ...no wait, cancer scare.
Customer: So they're all off the shelves because of a cancer scare?
Shopkeeper: Yes
Customer: (sigh) Just give me a packet of fags then.
Shopkeeper: Certainly. £4.50 please!

Spent my first day at DevWeek 2005 today, and I have to admit my brain seems fit to burst this evening. John Robbins was the keynote speaker this morning, giving a general talk on the new features in VS.NET 2005. I have to admit that if I was one of the developers behind ReSharper (the development tool for VS.NET 2003) I'd be seriously worried. All the refactoring tools in VS.NET 2005 seem to be heavily influenced by, if not directly copied from ReSharper (or at a push, Eclipse).

I spent the rest of the day being lectured by (and asking far too many akward questions of) Jeffrey Richter. His first two sessions were connected with the new features in C# 2.0 of which I'll blog about more later.

What was more worrying was what was mentioned almost in passing during his Exceptions lecture (which was in itself fascinating); .NET Remoting is dead - or at least not promoted any more by Microsoft. I'll have to get Ingo Rammer's take on this tomorrow as he's one of the speakers here. It's a shame if this is correct, as the last major project we completed at IS Solutions would not have been possible (or at least would have been even more painful than it was already) if .NET remoting wasn't as well designed as it is.

 

I've threatened on many occasions to make some MP3s available on this site of the worst band in the South West, the infamous Shirley Temple Pilots. Up till this point, common sense has prevailed and I've forgotten to carry out my promise.

Well, common sense has gone out of the window for the moment - so ladies and gentlemen, I give you a track recorded at Finns in Weymouth on the 8th January 2005.

Fuel

Usual caveats apply; I'd had too much to drink, voice playing up, a car drove by outside that was exactly the wrong shade of puce... you get the picture.