Vegas & The Aftermath - Diary

[Redsgirl]

How do you write to a friend who was diagnosed with cancer 18 months ago, &, you know, ask the question without actually asking it, or touching a nerve, just in case.......

I had to do exactly that last week, on an unrelated matter, & I pondered how I could ask the question without asking, if you get my drift. I mean, I could hardly write to him without making mention of his predicament, could I?

In fact, I never realised, but I owed him a small sum of money, just £10 or £20 or something, nothing of consequence, & I was not aware, or had forgotten.

So I said something like......

"Tell you what, be the greatest thing ever if we could settle up over a Starbucks in Vegas".

And - I swear to God this is true, his reply was that on that VERY day he had just been cleared by the quacks, & was officially in remission.

How good is that?

As I understand this was all posted on Facebook, I'm not giving too much away if I say "bravo Simon Galloway".

Bravo indeed.
I had no idea but I'm over the moon to read this.

[Simon Galloway]

I just read it myself!

Cheers Tony (and Redsgirl).  You could have just sent me a PM "Are you dead yet? N/M"  That way, if you got no reply, you could have saved yourself some typing

[tikay]

SPAM ALERT

Pardon the spam, but a man's gotta do.......


Here's a little piece I penned this morning, with reference to a very BIG day at Sky Poker. May contain Las Vegas stuff.


http://bit.ly/1QEdJcN

[Mohican]

Think I'll be putting a little effort into these.

[DaveShoelace]

You had the day off today Teeks?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/road-and-rail-transport/12172827/Flying-Scotsman-sets-off-for-inaugural-London-to-York-run.html

[Skippy]

You talked about being me being a Buffett fan in an old post. You're quite right- not sure whether it was you that made me interested or someone else , but it was definitely your suggestion that made me read "The Snowball".

Anyhow, it's the most wonderful time of the year....

http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/2015ltr.pdf

[Skippy]

You talked about being me being a Buffett fan in an old post. You're quite right- not sure whether it was you that made me interested or someone else , but it was definitely your suggestion that made me read "The Snowball".

Anyhow, it's the most wonderful time of the year....

http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/2015ltr.pdf

The jokes are good this year.

[TightEnd]

The Flying Scotsman on its journey north to York last week, passng a familiar location

[RED-DOG]

'Poetry' by Richard Branson.

Hows that for a double whammy?





The road to success is paved with tests,
So you’ve got to believe in yourself above the rest.

Dream big, and let your passion shine,
If you don’t, you won’t end up with a dime.

Challenge the status quo, disrupt the market and say YES!
And remember that innovation is an endless quest.

Don’t forget to change business for good,
If you want to change the world then you should.

If you think with your head and listen to your heart,
I promise you’ll get off to a flying start.

Make bold moves, but always play fair,
Always say please and thank you – it’s cool to care.

Do what you love and love what you do,
This advice is nothing new.

Now, stop worrying about whether your business will be a hit,
Rise to the challenge and say ‘screw it, let’s do it!’

Click to see full-size image.

[tikay]

Stop trying to rev me up, OK?

[RED-DOG]

Stop trying to rev me up, OK?

What you need is a flyball governor.

Can you identify the one on this steam engine? Do you know how it works?

[Marky147]

'Poetry' by Richard Branson.

Hows that for a double whammy?





The road to success is paved with tests,
So you’ve got to believe in yourself above the rest.

Dream big, and let your passion shine,
If you don’t, you won’t end up with a dime.

Challenge the status quo, disrupt the market and say YES!
And remember that innovation is an endless quest.

Don’t forget to change business for good,
If you want to change the world then you should.

If you think with your head and listen to your heart,
I promise you’ll get off to a flying start.

Make bold moves, but always play fair,
Always say please and thank you – it’s cool to care.

Do what you love and love what you do,
This advice is nothing new.

Now, stop worrying about whether your business will be a hit,
Rise to the challenge and say ‘screw it, let’s do it!’

Click to see full-size image.

[bobAlike]

Stop trying to rev me up, OK?

What you need is a flyball governor.

Can you identify the one on this steam engine? Do you know how it works?

Does it stop it over revving by centrifugal force?

[RED-DOG]

Stop trying to rev me up, OK?

What you need is a flyball governor.

Can you identify the one on this steam engine? Do you know how it works?

Does it stop it over revving by centrifugal force?

Yes. Excellent! Go to the top of the class.

The ones in clockwork motors (Like from the old wind up gramophones) work directly by centrifugal force. like a spinning ice skater can speed up or slow down their rotation by extending and retracting their arms, so the speed of the gramophone turntable is governed by the distance the swinging balls are from the pivot. The further away, the more resistance. It's incredibly precise, as can be seen by the fact that a record is made to turn at exactly 78 or 33 1/3 rpm.

The one on the steam engine works in exactly the same fashion, but instead of creating more resistance, when the balls move away from the spindle, they tighten a steam regulating valve.

[hector62]

Morning Mr T.

You've always seemed like a decent cove so I hope you won't mind me stealing a piece of your diary to regale a story. If I had a diary of my own then this tale would have pride of place.

Around 30 years ago I was driving back from work past Clapham common. I was channel hopping on the radio trying to find a song that I liked. Now one of the useless talents I have is that I can tell if I am going to like a song almost instantly and I happend on  song that I thought was fantastic, even though it was in the middle of the song. I eagerly listened at the end of it to find out who it was by, but no information was coming. All in all I was a bit stuck as I didn't know who sang it or what it was called.

And so began my trial of trying to track it down. I spent hours listening to the radio at every opportunity hoping to hear it again, listend to the chart show on Sundays with my fingers on the play/record buttons hoping to get the song onto a TDK SA C60 tape. But no song was ever forthcoming.

I bored my friends, family and work colleagues senseless trying to find the song. I even started buying melody maker and NME in the vain hope of tracing it. But the song remained lost and all that I had was the tune in my head, and a few lines from it. But it never left me. Every few weeks I would find myself singing it in my head, or even singing it out loud in the car.

So for 15 years or so I was haunted by this song, or maybe tortured would be more apt. Then my girlfriend introduced me to the internet. One Christmas I was given a book of the best 100 web sites, and in that list was a site that had the lyrics to songs. I thought my time had come. Now rather like that old war story where " send reinforcements we're going to advance" morphed into " send 3 and four pence we're going to a dance" what I had still in my head probably wasn't the correct words.

I typed in what I thought was the correct lines that I remembered.

" His name was Rex Von Goenstein
  He's forty seven going on nineteen"

And I got nada. Zilch. Nowt. Not even a possible hit.

Talk about deflated. Over the years I tried countless lyric sites and never got any possibility of a song. I even came across one site where you clicked out the tune with your mouse, but like all before I got nowhere. My all time low point came with a site where you had to whistle the tune and it would search for it. A few sips of water and a lot of practice and I was ready. I whistled at the mouse and into every likely looking part of the computer I could find but zippo. Later on my girlfriend told me that you needed a microphone attachment, which we didn't have, to input the sound. Oh how she used to mock me.

So it seemed that I was to be tortured for all time by this song. And then a couple of weeks ago something changed. Now I don't know whether I input a typo, or more likely Google got smarter but after I put in the lyrics that I remembered I got a hit. There it was at the top of Google's list - my song. I stared at the screen savouring the moment, my search was about to end after 30 years. A click on the link took me to you tube, a click on play and the dulcet tones bagan. After but a few notes I knew my search was over and wht is more I knew that I was still going to like the song.

Now this song won't be to everyone's taste, and I would describe the song as country, but if this song can have caused me so much anguish then it is surely worth a larger audience. So below is a link to the song Rex Bob Lowenstein by Mark Germino. Enjoy.