Malicious Web Sites

We have software at work that stops us looking at sites that we are not supposed to. Omally's blog has been blocked for a while as it says its 'Adult Content'. Perhaps he's posted pictures of his arse too many times. Well today I noticed that Geocaching websiet is blocked. It states that its a 'Malicious Web Site'. Not that we do any caching these days.

Dentist

I’ve finally done it. I’ve finally gone to the dentist to get my teeth sorted. I know I should have gone before now but trying to find an NHS dentist in Bournemouth was near impossible. When my fillings dropped out I should have gone to see one. Same again when those teeth that had fillings started to break. But as I wasn’t in pain I didn’t go. I did get pain in one tooth about 8 years ago. I had to go and see a private dentist. He offered to do a full report on my teeth, which I accepted. The pain was just an abscise. Which was treated with drugs at the time. The report came back and he quoted over £1,000 for the treatment he said I needed. He’s already charged me £300 so far and had not actually done any work on my teeth. The first part of the treatment was for me to see the nurse for her to tell me I never went back to a dentist until now.

One of my other teeth started to hurt and hurt badly. Luckily there is a dentist just round the corner from my house that is accepting NHS patients. Lets have a big cheer for Polish dentists coming here to work in the NHS. British dentist seem reluctant to. Anyway managed to book myself in and boy did I get a telling off for leaving it this long. Thing is he was quite right. I have been an idiot for not doing something about my teeth until now. As I expected he gave me pills for the abscise, and told me to come back to have my rotten teeth removed and others filled. First tooth removal was on Friday and it feels so much better. Thursday night was just terrible, pain wise. Luckily the tooth removal was relatively pain free. Why do they have to use such a long needle when giving you your mouth antiseptic?

Since then the tooth has been OK. Get pain when the cold gets to it, but other than that Its OK. At least I, and Sue can sleep easy in our bed now.

Garden bird of the year

In my last blog I mentioned about seeing what I thought would be Bird of the year. Well today I saw what must be what be Garden Bird of the Year. Sue say it first and announced that we had a Heron in te garden. I thought she was playing a game, like on QI when they say that there is an elephant in the room. To be honest I did see one flying over a couple of weeks ago. As it didn't stop I couldn't count it in our garden list, but it did today. Nice one.

Bird of the year

Had a day working form home today but after checking my e-mail first thing I just had to pop out to the Lakeside Park to see what I think is going to be my bird of the year. A Slovenion Grebe. Local birder Simon Ingram says its the first he's ever seen at Lakeside. It also marks his 150th different bird seen there. Saw a couple of other birders there who's made there way down for it. Lovely.

un-happy commuter

My travel home from work options are like this at the moment. I can leave work at 16:15 and scoot up to the train station and try to catch the 16:46 Virgin (now Cross Country) service (to Manchester) and change at either Southampton Central or the airport and get on the Totton-Romsey shuttle train to Eastleigh. These shuttle trains are normally quite full, so I have to stand. Therefore I always change at the airport as its only 5 mins from airport to Eastleigh, so isn’t that terrible. What is bad though is that these trains are normally full of rowdy teenagers who have “gone down to the city to hang around”. Using these trains get me to Eastleigh at around 17:34.

My other option is to wait and catch the 16:59 South West Trains Waterloo service from Bournemouth. Then change onto the stopping service to Winchester arriving at Eastleigh at 17:56. This has its advantages in that I can change trains either at Brockenhurst, Southampton Central, or at the airport, there is always seats available, not may rowdy teenagers, and I gain 15 mins of flexi time at work being able to work until 16:30.

Up to now having both options is working OK. However, the new train timetables were issued yesterday, starting on 9 December and things have changed. Going to work and to/from football on a Saturday is OK. However the Totton-Romsey shuttle is being replaced by a Salisbury-Eastleigh-Southampton-Salisbury circular service and is being retimed as a result. It now longer gets overtaken at Southampton by the 16:46 Manchester service. In fact this service will become the 16:45 service, it getting an extra minute to get to Brockenhurst. This new Salisbury circular service now leaves after the 16:59 train and will get into Eastleigh at 17:47. So I’ve lost 13 mins each day but not having an ‘earlier train’. So there is no point in me leaving work for the 16:45, I won’t get home any quicker. So my flexi would improve working to 16:30. However there is no Winchester stopping service anymore, so all the passengers from that train, heading to all station up to Eastleigh will be on my Salisbury circular service. I said already how busy it was. If they keep it as the normal two-car units as it is at the moment then its going to be chaos. No room for everyone. If I want to avoid this train then the next one to Eastleigh won’t get in till 18:06, thus loosing me even more time. This being the 17:05 from Bournemouth. Advantage is that I don’t have to change train, disadvantage is the it takes longer, but at least its an option if I miss the 16:59.

I’ll have to see what is it going to be like after the timetable change, just I’m not looking Sforward to it one bit.

Pictures to follow

It’s Monday morning (boo), I’m on the train heading for work (boo), so thought I’d type out my blog. Yeap it seems that this is the only time in the week that I know I can sit down and blog.

Had Friday off as Sue and I were off to the \Bridgewater Carnival (pictures to follow) . It was very good, thoroughly enjoyable day. Had tea and cake at St Mary’s church in Bridgewater. Then sat in the pews waiting for time to go and see the carnival.

Saturday was spend bird watching. Went to West Sedgewick RSPB reserve. Didn’t see much here. The main attraction here is nesting herons. From the hide we saw where they had nested in the spring high up in the trees, but they had long gone.

Then on to another reserve, whose name escapes me at present. Eventually found one of the hides here. The map at the entrance isn’t very clear. Not much in the way of bird life but we did see two otters which was just fantastic. We left to go to the another hide and took a different route back hoping that is was going to be less muddy. It wasn’t it was worse. One of Sue’s shoes split under the strain of being constantly being pulled out of the mud. When we got back to the main path she said that she had to go back to the car. However we did notice a huge number of people coming into the site. It was late in the afternoon. I knew that the big starling display was around this area somewhere but didn’t realise that this was one of the best places to see it from. This left me in a dilemma. I know how much she wanted to one day see the starling display where millions of starling all form one huge flock, creating patterns in the air before landing for the night. But Sue couldn’t walk up where everyone was going because of her show situation. So I had a choice, should I leave Sue in the car and go back to see the starlings? It means there was no point in us both missing them as we were so close to them. But it just wouldn’t be the same without sue being there. But would Sue have wanted me to miss out on them as well? It wasn’t an easy choice, but I did go back to see the starlings. Saw thousands of them arrive (pictures to follow) but they all flew to the other end of the reserve behind some trees, So still didn’t see the huge spectacle of them. Which in some ways was good. Means that Sue and I can come back and see them together.

Sunday started with breakfast in the Sainsbury’s restaurant, just opposite the Travelodge. Oh I haven’t mentioned yet that it was a new Travelodge for us. We stayed at the one in Taunton. Another one to tick off the list. Before heading back. Did a couple of churches on the way back (pictures to follow) Last of which was the outstanding Wilton Parish Church near Salisbury. Superb Italianate design. Sorry folks yet again, pictures are to follow.

Ringwood and Nuthatches

It’s Monday morning (boo), I’m on the train heading for work (boo), so thought I’d type out my blog. Yeap I didn’t win the lottery this weekend either.

Work was busy last week. We had our regular GIS user day and I had to give a small 15 min talk, so I was preparing for that. It’s amazing how much time is needed to put together a decent 15 min talk. I do look forward to the challenge of talking to a group. But realise that I’m not that good at it. Nerves make me sweat, talk faster than my brain can keep up and so miss out points and end up garbling what I’m saying. Still I’m getting better with each one.

Saturday we had a little trip out. Down to Ringwood to visit the charity shops. Had a nice Jacket Spud in the square, Also went to have at look at the church. Passed it so many times but never been in. St Peter and St Paul is a lovely looking church. With interesting brass memorial just inside the door, lovely font and great stained glass windows.

Mooched up to Blashford Lakes. First visit here and glad I got instructions fromone of the locals before hand. Never seen so many herons in one place at one time. Great. Nice hides but two didn’t have opening windows which I can take piccies from. Still got a reasonable one of a Nuthatch. (see below) The Screen overlooking the Mockbegger Lake don’t have any decent parking next to them and so we missed out on them. Star bird I was after was a Great White Egret. Guess which lake it was on… Yeap the Mockegger one.. Will have to go back and get that one soon. Also tried to get to a church at Breamore (pronounced bremmer) Should have realised that it would be next to Breamore house. Oh well when we got and get the Egret we’ll do the church at the same time. Lovely drive back home through the forest.

Sunday was spend pottering in the garden. Filled up both the normal compost bin and the leaf compost bin. So over to the worms to do their stuff and make me some nice compost for me for next summer.