I remember - from my visit last year - that from the airport to Bangkok centre we go through at least one, and possibly two, sets of toll booths and it takes around 25-30 minutes for the journey.

Unfortunately, the taxi driver decides to do it 'on the cheap' and decides we're going to get off the toll roads straight after leaving the airport.

(Traffic on a good day)

To show me how well he knows the area he stops at a lay-by outside of Suvarnhabumi and asks a fellow taxi driver directions...!

After about 1.5 hours stuck in traffic (and still about 6km away from my hotel) he decides to get back onto the toll road and we're at the hotel in about another 40 minutes (and most of this time was spent trying to get back on the toll road)!

Welcome to Bangkok!

At the helm of 'their' new car, Gibbo picks me up and drives me down to Heathrow Airport for my flight to Bangkok.

Apart from some trouble on the Acle straight, which delays us for an hour, not much in the way of traffic and we make fairly good time - ta mate!

Flight to Thailand is okay. Not much in the way of exciting movies on-board but I watch the new Tom Cruise film, Valkyrie, which is about the plot to assassinate Hitler in 1944.

Didn't think too much of the film to be honest with you. May have been a combination of tiredness, red wine, etc., but not one I would rush out to buy.

Have decided to do some more diving courses.

I need to redo my Emergency First Response (EFR) Course as it's kinda expired but also want to do my EFR Instructors course.

Additionally, I've always been meaning to take my Enriched Air Nitrox (EANx) course AND I want to do the instructors course for that.

I decided to contact a few dive centres in the UK (one in London, one in Portsmouth) and a couple of Health & Safety teaching companies (for the EFR).

Well, to cut a long story short....

The price for doing the first aid courses was quoted as being around £400 plus of course accommodation needed, travel, etc. Ok!

I emailed a dive center in Phuket and enquired about the cost of courses with them...

Chris Owen, Course Director with Indepth Diving has quoted me 23,500 THB for the lot: that's £430 (approximately) and includes manuals, PIC[s], etc.

Guess I'm off to Thailand then...

Received another text message from Col this afternoon telling me that the teams Jo plays for: Stokesley/North Riding/England U13's, have just emerged victorious in the home internationals!

They beat Ireland on penalties in the semi finals and then beat Wales 4 - 0 in the final to take the championship!

Absolutely awesome Jo and all the team from Stokesley.

Where's the U13 European competition played Col?

Sarah invited me around for Sunday lunch () and just before she up and prepared and cooked it, just got a photo of her working in the garden (two-handed working I see ):

...and here's one of Sam providing his mum and dad with more ammunition to embarrass him in front of his mates in a few years time:

Gibbo has dipped his hand in his pocket and purchased Sky Sports for the upcoming Lions tour of South Africa.

Just to make sure the set is working, we had two cup games on this weekend which need watching: Northampton v Bourgoin and Leicester v Leinster.

Both games were entertaining, a good victory for Northampton against and ill-disciplined and punchy French-side (haven't heard that one before have we?) and hard luck to Leicester were outclassed for most of the game against a strong Leinster team.

John sent me a photo which had been scanned by his boy, Chris, who had received it off Chris Claydon:

On Tour in Paris, 1994 (?)

(L-R) Chris Claydon, Me, John Miller, Dave Prescott, Andy Ford)

No, nothing most of you would have heard about, but...

A few weeks ago (and on a previous post) I mentioned about Col's eldest boy, Jo, playing for North Riding in the U13 'Northern' football championships, which they won.

Well...

I received a text from Col this afternoon telling me that they had won the All England championship played this afternoon at the Walker Stadium in Leicester.

Next is the Home Internationals, next week at the Reebok Stadium (I believe).

Go Jo, go Jo, go Jo...!!!!

The new hard drive arrived today (about 10 days earlier than promised) so that was good.

Out with the old hard drive:

...and in with the new:

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Now to get it working.

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I haven't done this kind of thing for a few years now so onto the internet to get assistance from those in the know.

Go through the FDISK and Formatting of the new drive and then, when I boot from the XP cd, keep getting the following error message:

File isapnp.sys caused an unexpected error (4096) at line 5882 in d:\xpclient\base\boot\setup\setup.c

Various sites say it could me a RAM problem, other sites say it could be a few other problems...ho hum!

Anyway, to cut a long story short, I manage to reinstall from the Sony Recovery Disks and all is now well.

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Well, apart from the XP Pro, SP3 software I ordered 2 weeks ago from PCONESTOPSHOP, still hasn't arrived.

After phoning them 5 times and emailing them at least 10 times [without one single reply or acknowledgement], the person I spoke to said they'd emailed me and told me it was out of stock - NO YOU DIDN'T.

If it was out of stock then why did your website say it was in stock?

Cancelled it and won't ever use them again.

---

So, I went on to Amazon.co.uk and ordered a new one from a reseller.
It was twice the price of the ONESTOPSHITE but hopefully this one will arrive - hurry up please

Worked like a dream

13 minutes for the upgrade, slightly longer for the application/information restore, et voila!

Now why couldn't it have been that easy on the previous attempts?

Big thanks to 'Geoff'.

Decided to upgrade my iPhone today.

I've tried twice before with this version of the firmware and it hasn't worked.

Have just started the process...will see how long it takes and if it's successful.

Saw this just now on the BBC website...

Police officers to patrol buses

My Sony Vaio decided to give up yesterday.

I got a few error messages and a system shut-down until finally, it wouldn't start again.

In went the XP disk to reboot and reinstall but that didn't work: only a message that a certain 'file' on the 'D' drive was kaput/couldn't find it.

Strange this as my 'C' drive is my boot drive...

Anyway, in went the Ghost disks - nope!

In went the original Vaio recovery disks...and finally, the error message of 'Cannot find the hard drive...check connections...'.

Stripped the laptop apart and the hard drive connection looked okay (as far as I could tell). Nothing for it...another drive needed.

Managed to get one on eBay for £60 (160 GB capacity), only problem is it'll take up to 2 weeks to get here from the States...ah well!

Fortunately [I think], everything on that laptop is backed-up [he says hopefully ].

Saw this link via a mate of a mates blog site:

Stunning Photos of London