It was my brother’s 7th birthday the other day! {{{Giant Applause}}} I drove over to his school and picked him up and took him back to his house. We had some time before guests arrived for his party (he’d already had a party with kids his own age - this was more for close friends and family) so he helped me work on my car.

Now some of you will remember my good friend Tilt, and his red KITT Scanner Light. (click the pic for a Quicktime Video). Well I intended to make Tilt live on in my new car…

My new car is a dark blue Ford Fiesta and thanks to the help of my brother (I didn’t really need his help, but we had fun putting it together) the same scanner light is now installed on it. I’ve named my new car ‘Buddy’, cos he’s, erm, well… my new buddy. I turned on the light for the first time and it looked fantastic, just as it did on Tilt. My brother loved it too. He learned quite a bit aswell - he can now tell you the difference between a conductor and an insulator and can even give you examples! We turned off the light and went inside and played Power Rangers together (in my defence, it was his idea - although his new Thundersaurus MegaZord toy was pretty cool…)

The problem with parties is that there tend to be lots of kids, and when there are lots of kids, I seem to get attacked a lot. They end up seeing me as the funny man (my brother has even told me in the past that I’m the funniest man on the planet - maybe I should teach him that he’s wrong instead of teaching him about electricity?). As a result, all 3 of them decided to attack me with swords. Now we’re not talking the pathetic light plastic ones that bend on contact - we’re talking very strong plastic that could easily leave you with bruises. After battling The Three Musketeers we finally were able to sit down and have food. But did it end there? Of course not.

They attacked me with Superman stickers;

One meal and 6 stickers later, they’re back to jumping all over me and the next thing I know - one girl (she’s a viscious one for a 6 year old, she really is) punched me right in the groin! And believe me when I tell you that she can pack a punch! I’ve not felt pain like that down there since I was in primary school! Back then when we played soccer I used to be a good goalkeeper, up until the day I was faced against Sebastian Weaver - he was a few years older than me and even at the age of 11, was taller than any other teacher. He was a giant, and he took a penalty shot. I saved the ball with the two of mine. A lot of guys will be able to sympathise with this kind of pain, but girls - believe me when I say that even though [thankfully] there’s no permanent damage - it sure doesn’t feel that way at the time! This would be why I’m now ball-scared.

Anyways, I don’t want to spend time on my genetalia (and I’m sure you don’t either). Right… Erm, forgive me - I’ve just realised what it is I’ve just written. Arghh, sod it - it’s most probably true anyway.

Moving swiftly on… I returned to my car to take a look at the KITT Scanner again in all its glory. But something’s wrong. One of the LEDs has burnt out. Suddenly there’s a gap in the scan! Unfortunately, with no way to fix it, all was lost. But fortunately, my mother very kindly bought me a new one online. It’s slightly longer (16.8″ compared to 14″) and fits the front of the car better that way, and this one even has a speed control on it. It’s not on yet because I need to disconnect the switch from the old one and wire it up to the new one (otherwise there’ll be no turning it off!).

Although the speed controller and the extra length will ultimately make it look better (I hope), it’s a shame that in some respects, it means that Tilt’s memory won’t live on in Buddy. Then again, I suppose there’s no harm in seeing if I can salvage a 12v battery from a scrap yard and have Tilt’s scanner in my room. Maybe it’ll make my desk go fast?

Seeing as we’re now on my desk (not literally), the other night when I was on my computer I was chatting with a guy online and he had the best shock ever!

<sheepishveb> wtf
<sheepishveb> WTF
<sheepishveb> MY HOUSE IS FOR SALE?
<al> LMFAO!
<sheepishveb> OMFG
<al> you serious?
<sheepishveb> the stupid real estate fuckers
<sheepishveb> put the next door neighbours ON OUR LAND
<sheepishveb> LOL
<sheepishveb> omfg
<sheepishveb> why do they do that?
<sheepishveb> someone just knocked on our door
<sheepishveb> and said “how much?”
<sheepishveb> “…”
<sheepishveb> lol
<al> how much did you tell them it was for?
<sheepishveb> i said “what?”
<sheepishveb> and they pointed to the sign
<sheepishveb> and i blinked
<sheepishveb> and told them it was the next door neighbours

How awesome is that!?! My friend Chris Kite (renowned developer of FlyakiteOSX) suggested that he should have put his pinky to his mouth, and been like, “1 trillion dollars!” Bwa ha ha ha It was also the day that one of the bots on the chatroom went out of control; http://qdb.us/55323

But once all the fun was over, I decided to go to bed. Except I couldn’t, because my sheets were in the dryer downstairs. So I take them out, put some other washing in the dryer, bring the sheets upstairs, put them on the bed, and then realised that they were still damp! At that point I figured taking them back downstairs or drying them with a hair dryer would be too much effort, so I fell asleep in a damp bed - which is something else I’ve not done since I was a little kid - and that’s not including in high school when my dad found out that the most effective way of waking me up and getting me out of bed in the morning was to get a bucket of cold water and pour it over my head. I am NOT joking! I was most definately not amused….

But slightly off-topic, I’ve been transferring some photos from my phone and found this one from December. Whilst we were waiting for me to get a tyre replaced on Buddy, Dave and I looked around the car yard and found one that he wouldn’t mind having. It was winter, it was cold, and he took the last three letters of the number-plate as an instruction;

Dave couldn’t afford it. I think that he was hoping that by urinating on the side of the car he would be able to negotiate with them into lowering the price…?

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 9th, 2006 at 1:47 am and is filed under General, Tilt. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.