David Morris – brassedoff.net

(copy of email sent to Pizza Express after the rant below)

I recently dined at your Meadowhall Sheffield restaurant, and for the most part, had a thoroughly enjoyable meal with my wife and young son.  Indeed, it was his first outing to a pizza restaurant having only  recently discovered he “liked” pizza (finicky eater!).

However, I was most put out at the price of soft drinks. A regular sized  bottle of Diet Coke was £1.80. I would be intrigued to hear how you  feel you can justify such an expense for something available in  supermarkets, say for less than 50p. I was even more disturbed by this  because I have just returned from a business trip to the USA. There as  you’re probably aware, most restaurants offer free refills for soft  drinks. I don’t think I’d have any problem paying £1.80 if I were  getting free refills, but not per bottle.

So, you must be making at least £1.30 profit per bottle, and I’d lay  odds you’re paying less than 50p/bottle. Generally, I’m in favour of  people making a reasonable living, but approaching a 200% markup? You’ve  got to be kidding, surely?

I appreciate you probably don’t have draught dispensers for soft drinks,  which would probably have a bearing on this, but even so, I believe your  current pricing does stretch things a bit doesn’t it?

I eagerly await your response.

Am I allowed a rant? It’s only a little one… the rant that it… ;-)

On Monday, we had promised Daniel that we’d go out for dinner after the Chuckle Brothers show at the Lyceum, which incidentally, was great fun again.

Rather than going straight out after the show, we came home because it was too early for dinner. We decided to try the Pizza Hut at Drakehouses Retail Park, but as usual whenever we go, there was a queue. “Not to worry” we thought, “let’s go to the one on Meadowhall Retail Park”. This plan was foiled by, I think, Mayfest at Don Valley – the queues on Broughton Lane were horrible.

So, another diversion, this time to Meadowhall and Pizza Express. We’d not eaten there before, and this being Daniel’s first time ever eating pizza away from home, only recently discovered he liked it, we wanted itto be a “positive experience”. Mrs Woolforbrains and I both like Pizza Express pizzas – they sell them in Sainsbury’s so we were relatively confident of getting the “positive experience” we were looking for.

The kids menu was good, service was good and the pizzas were very nice, so why the rant?

A bottle of diet Coke. £1.80

One Pound b***dy Eighty Pence!

Three Dollars Sixty Cents! (I have just come back from the US remember).

A can of Coke from a vending machine at work is only 50 or 60p. They’re cheaper than that at the local supermarkets, so how the hell can anyone justify charging £1.80 for a bottle? It wasn’t as if we were likely to get free refills either. I don’t object to paying a premium for alcoholic drinks, but soft drinks? Come on.

If you think this is a fabrication on my part, here it is in all its glory.

The next time, I’m drinking water.

(I’ve written to complain to Pizza Express. I’ll let you know what I get back)

Well, here we are at Headingly, home of Yorkshire cricket for day three of the second test against the West Indies, and guess what? Yes, it’s raining. It’s not actually raining at the moment, but we’re sat here with wet weather gear on. The covers have just come off so we may see some play. Happy birthday to Mark as well.

Before I go any further, thanks to Ryan and Helen for delurking and commenting. It’s really gratifying to know that people read what’s written. (Thanks to all longer-standing contributors as well – I haven’t forgotten you).

Yesterday / last night (it’s difficult because my time-zone awareness is still pretty screwed after the trip from the US) was a bit tense. We were over 30 minutes late leaving Charlotte (I think I may have mentioned it in my last post). Well, by the time we’d finished with maneuvers at Phili, we had 30 minutes to get from Terminal C to Terminal A (or t’other way round, not that it matters much). This meant a high speed dash across the airport and I daresay we upset a few locals into the bargain. We made it though with around 10 minutes to spare – enough time to pay a visit to the bathroom (do you have a bath in there? Why call it a bathroom then?) before boarding the plane. Alas, no chance of a few seats to spread out on ‘cos it was packed solid.

I did manage to grab a couple of hours semi-sleep though, courtesy of the new travel toy, pretty much purchased (in the UK) for these trips. I can heartily recommend the Sennheiser PXC250 noise-cancelling headphones. The difference they make on long flights is very noticeable. They cancel out I’d estimate, around75% of the low frequency noise which includes all the engine and wind noise meaning you don’t have to have your MP3 player up as loud. I used them to the US and back on a pair of AAA batteries so they’re not expensive to run. The set also comes with 1/4″ and airline adapters.

It looks like tomorrow’s going to be a wet cricket day, but what the hell. I may blog from my Blackberry whilst I’m there… let’s wait and see!

It’s nice to be home.

PS: the car we had for the week ended up doing around 18MPG – a 3.5l petrol engine in a bus, petrol (gas) at $3.05US/gallon.

…doesn’t mean you should.

So, here I am, sat in Charlotte Douglas International Airport in sunny North Carolina on Friday afternoon at 16:40, waiting for a flight to Philadelphia. Am I being extravagent, paying for WiFi access? No, because CLT has free public WiFi. Free. Zero Bucks.

I’ve just spent a week in a hotel at Matthews just outside Charlotte with free WiFi for guests.

Name me one place in the UK where you’d get that sort of service for free?

Can’t think of one? No, neither can I. This side of the Great Divide, ‘net access is almost taken as a given, not a privilege one has to pay through the nose for. silicon.com ran a series of articles about public WiFi access, and it appears that the UK and Europe know how to charge with hotels leading the offensive. C’mon. If the US can do it, surely the UK can?

For Mrs Woolforbrains; I’m sorry if I confused you with the last posting regarding coming home tomorrow. I wrote the posting yesterday; when I checked earlier, I realised I’d forgotten to publish it. Consequently, when I published it this morning, it was out of date. Oops.
It’s hectic here A Charlotte Douglas International. Monday is a public holiday in the US – Memorial Day, so I think a lot of people are travelling for the long weekend – it certainly seems like it. Our flight to Phili is already delayed by 15 minutes, but by the looks of things, there are some people who look like they’ve been camping out for a while, so airport delays over public holidays are not just a British phenonem.

I must also say this before I forget. I spoke to Daniel earlier and he told me he’d got his 100m badge and progressed on to the next level in his swimming class.

This makes me a very proud Dad, especially considering I couldn’t swim a stroke at seven.

Sunday, I’m off with Mr Kelly to the cricket at Headingley. Monday, we’re off to see the Chuckle Brothers at The Lyceum. If you’ve never seen them live, go grab a friends kids and use them as an excuse to go. It’s absolutely superb family entertainment. We saw them last year and couldn’t wait togo again. It’s most likely going to be a sell-out show as well.

Just before I sign off, please take time to check this out:

Anyway, enough for now. Time to publish this post…

We were in the US ASDA  (aka Wal*Mart – not my asterisk) a couple of days ago buying a few bits and pieces prior to the trip home… things you just don’t get at home like cheap Nintendo DS games!

Anyway, back to the plot.

Just like at home, stores are trying to clamp down on the problems of underage drinking by saying that you need to look above a certain age otherwise they reserve the right to ask you for ID, and they’ve probably issued guidelines to the checkout operators in terms of “If he looks younger than ‘x’, ask him his name”.

Usually, it’s 21 or 25 around home which seems reasonable.

At the Monroe Wal*Mart, the sign posted on the checkout clearly says that if you’re under 40… get that? 40. Mark, if you’re reading this, that probably means your dear lady would get asked her age.

Come on. Get real. 40?

How long will it be before you’ve got to present some senior family member to vouch for your age before you can get out with a bottle of vino? I only hope that’s a guideline that stays well and truly this (at the time of writing) side of The Pond.

On a positive note, we’re coming home tomorrow so Daniel may have a couple of nice surprises to look forward to if he’s been good. Mrs Woolforbrains may get her wool if she’s been good. I somehow suspect they’ve probably both been good whilst I’ve been away.

Got to go now… work to be done and all that…

For once, brassedoff.net is descending in to the dirty world of fibre.

It’s mainly so Mrs Woolforbrains can get an early view of her fibre. I suppose it will also spawn a postikng on my dear lady’s blog and have a consequent positive impact on my hit stats, so can generally be regarded as a Good Thing.

The fibre-containing box was waiting for me when I got to Matthews, NC which is one way of avoiding the international postage rates… get me to bring it back with me.

Fortunately, the fibre is contained.n It’s not a releat of teh red angel hair metallic stuff that went everywhere.

Anyway, enough of my ramblings. I suppose you want to see the wool?

Shiney isn’t it? (Click for bigger image)

Don’t think this blog will become a regular fibre haven. I generally try to keep it as fibre-free as possible, but you never know…

(all thumbnails are links to larger images)

Yes, I’m in the US again. Sunny Charlotte (and it is sunny, warm, pushing 30′C – low 90s in old money). Rather than just spend the day hanging around the malls making the places look untidy, we’ve been exploring. Just north of Charlotte, there’s a huge (like, big, really big) lake called Lake Norman. Perhaps I should have realised when I saw who created the lake, but more of that later.

I’ll start at the bottom end of the lake (which we actually did last) just for dramatic effect.

It’s very very nice. There are some absolutely stunning properties on the lake shores; lots of private developments and apartment complexes.

We stopped off at one point and had a walk alongside the marina, just admiring the boats and the view. Everything from wet bikes and jetskis to big “powered rafts”, yachts and luxury cruisers. Some serious money here as you can see.

Some of the private water-front properties are very nice. You’d certainly have one of these as a holiday home wouldn’t you?!

Of course, not everything is always a nice as it looks.

Drive up to the top end of the lake and something malevolent is lurking.

This sign might give a clue.

Nuclear alert?

Yes, it’s true. Lake Norman was created by Duke Energy some years ago, by the looks of it, to provide cooling water for this.

It’s a dirty great big nulcear (or nuculer if you’re George Dubyah) reactor which generates power for Charlotte and surrounding areas (at a guess). This inlet off the main lake is probably where the cooling water comes out of the reactors – possibly the two cylindrical constructions above the two water outlets. The water swirls and eddies with what I would guess is the flow of water leaving the plant.

It just set us in mind of the episode of Simpsons where Bart catches the three-eyed fish and Burns and co go to town to point out that there’s nothing nasty coming out of their nuclear plant.

Kevin suggested this picture. I wouldn’t swim. Would you?

I don’t know whether you can see in the above picture (looking back up towards the plant), but there are a number of people fishing in the inlet.

Can you imagine anyone fishing that close to Sellafield? I can’t.

Finally, a shot for Daniel. This is the car we’re driving this week.

It hasn’t got an MPG readout on it. It’s probably a good job. It’s a seven seater (there’s only three of us but we’ve got a lot of luggage – honest!).

Are you worried by store loyalty cards? Perhaps you should be. After all, your average Nectar card provides quite a lot of profiling information to Sainsbury’s. It has its advantages of course – the “free” points as a result of using the card are nice, but it’s only fair that we should get something back in return for all the demographic information we supply.

I wasn’t that surprised that this box landed in the post this morning.

What was it I wondered? Let’s open the box…

After all, I’m male, I shave, I do (occasionally) buy razors. Admittedly, not the really expensive ones like this Gillette Fusion though. I don’t know how much they are, but I bet they’re not cheap. I also be that JS make a bob or three on each one thy sell. How many gents, on receipt of one of these beauties in the post this morning will feel obliged to buy replacement blades when the freebie expires, especially as there’s a £1 off discount voucher included in the box?

I bet it’s a carefully calculated equation, and I also bet that JS know from my Nectar card details that they’ve sent one of these to me and that they’re watching my buying over the next few weeks to see if their gamble comes off.

Sceptical?

It’s pretty easy to see how they could do it. Every time I buy something in Sainsbury’s, I hand over my uniquely identified Nectar card. They then associate a unique checkout transaction code with that card – a checkout transaction code which has against it a list of all the items I’ve just purchased. Sainsbury’s then know exactly where I live and what I buy because my name and address are associated with that Nectar card. Hardly rocket science is it?

So, do I value my privacy?

Yes, I do, so why do I have a Nectar card? Well, it’s done in the full knowledge that I’m providing a load of information to my friendly local (profits up 46%) supermarket chain. Be honest though, I’m providing a load of information anyway. I pay by card rather than cash. That alone could (were it not for the data protection act) allow Sainsbury’s to glean a lot of information from my purchasing habits.

On balance, it’s worth it. The accumulation of Nectar points means a reduced price shop at Christmas, and every so often, they send me presents in the post.

If you do it in full knowledge of the consequences, you can hardly accuse them of being “Big Brother” can you?

(edit: If you’re coming here from the Model Slipway web site, this page features better pictures of the Range Safety boat on its second outing).

Last year, for my birthday, I got a Model Slipway Range Safety Boat kit. These kits require quite a lot of assembly. They’re not the sort of thing you screw or glue together and off you go. For instance, you have to cut out all the window apertures. You have to cut holes for and mount the propeller shaft tubes. All the railings have to be fabricated from brass wire. Basically, there’s a lot to do. Technically there’s not twelve months work, but I don’t get a tremendous amount of time to spend on the boat building.

However, today was the maiden voyage of the boat at Millhouses. It wasn’t without a few mishaps before we got to Millhouses. I succeeded in knocking off one of aerials putting it in the car which required application of Superglue, and by the time we’d got to Millhouses, the anchor winch had come away. Fortunately, I’d taken the glue with me.

Having borrowed someone’s straps (thanks, Jim) to launch the boat (it’s quite heavy as it’s got about 5kg of ballast in the form of six inch nails) I quickly found out that I’d got the rudder servo back to front (i.e. stick left to move right etc). At least that was the only problem, although I was surprised I hadn’t noticed it whilst it was on the bench. The dual motor control (it’s got twin screws) worked well and on the water the boat handled and looked brilliant.

I grabbed the camera to get a picture only to be informed by the camera that I’d forgotten to put the CF card in (it’s probably in the card reader in the study!), so the only picture I got was on the phone.

I’ll get some better pictures next time out.

Having had lots of fun with the boat, it started to rain and the transmitter started to moan about low batteries so I borrowed Jim’s straps to get the boat out of the water. As I was just about to put it on its stand, the front strap slipped and the boat crunched to the ground, knocking a 1cm lump off the gel coat. The shock also knocked the mast off, dislodged the anchor and support and caused part of the cabin back wall to pull away from the cabin sides. Fortunately, it’s all fixable with filler, glue and a spot of paint – one of the advantages of having built it myself (I’ve got all the bits already in the house).

I’ve been down to B&Q this afternoon to pick up some webbing for my own set of straps.

I’m also going to research a small bilge pump for it because it does ship a bit of water, but nothing excessive.

Mrs Woolforbrains reckoned I had a smile permanently affixed to my face for the hour or so I was sailing it, and it did feel good, especially as the boat was attracting quite a bit of attention from the other people sailing and watching.

If anyone’s interested, there’s usually boats being sailed on the boating lake at Millhouses Park most Sunday mornings. The link in the previous sentence is to Google Maps so you can see where to find us.