Me banging on about F1 again amongst other things…

So Kimi Raikkonen’s the World Driver’s Champion, for a week or so anyway. I know rules are rules – they’ve got to be followed and punishments dished out to those who break the rules. For those who don’t know what I’m on about, I’ll fill you in.

The final race of the F1 season was on Sunday. After qualifying, Massa (Ferrari) was on pole. he had no chance of winning the title. Hamilton (McLaren) was 2nd, leading the championship by 4 points over Alonso (McLaren), who lined up 4th. In between them was Raikkonen (Ferrari) who was 7 points behind Hamilton.

Kimi Raikkonen

The race started and Raikkonen & Alonso overtook Hamilton. Hamilton then ran wide a couple of corners later and dropped down to 7th or so. Then he had a gearbox problem which dropped him down to 18th, I think. He then fought his way back up through the field and finished 7th. Alonso was 3rd and Raikkonen won. This meant that Raikkonen won the championship by 1 point over both Alonso and Hamilton, with Hamilton coming 2nd overall due to having one more 2nd place throughout the course of the season.

With the race over, and Raikkonen crowned champion, I went to set up my fish tank. Later that evening, I was looking on my WAP on my phone and read that BMW Sauber & Williams may be disqualified due to the fuel in their car being 2 – 3°C lower than the ‘ambient temperature’ of the track. The stewards met and after a 3 hour discussion decided that the result would stand.

This lower temperature would give the cars a 5bhp or so power boost and also allow them to fill the car with fuel marginally faster (and a margin in F1 is measured in .001’s of a second). In other words, to disqualify them from the race would mean that the punishment didn’t fit the crime. There’s absolutely no indication that this was deliberate and according to a second agency responsible for measuring the temperature, it was within the 10°C limit allowed.

Of course, as is their right, McLaren decided to appeal this ruling as a promotion of 3 places would have given Hamilton the title. Hamilton himself says that he doesn’t want to win the title in this way. Alonso goes as far as to say it would be an embarrassment to the sport (but he would, wouldn’t he?!!).

So no-one can celebrate properly until the courts have dragged this one out. It’s bloody stupid. Why can’t McLaren just accept the original ruling. I’m not saying that just as someone who’s not the biggest fan of McLaren, I’d be saying the same if a Man Utd player was sent off and Fergie decided to appeal. Just accept it and move on for God’s sake.

Raikkonen deserves to win the title. All the headlines should be for him. Instead, the Lewis Hamilton show rolls on even when the season is over. It’s not his fault but people are going to go off him if his team don’t stop using him as a puppet all the time. I’ve not been a fan for a while, as you may have noticed, but he’s a brilliant driver and deserves better than what he’s getting. As does Alonso.

Here’s something for you; When Ayrton Senna died and David Coulthard was put in his place at Williams, I liked him. He went to McLaren and lost every aspect that was good about his personality. He goes to Red Bull and he’s great again. Mika Hakkinen was a fantastic driver. At McLaren he was a boring bastard. He leaves, goes to race in DTM in Germany and he’s a laugh again. McLaren saps the life out of F1. The corporate, must-win image is valuable to them and they have great respect throughout, but they are just so unlikeable. They are the Peter Ebdon of F1.

On a final F1 note for the season (until they announce that McLaren’s appeal has failed, I hope), well done Kimi Raikkonen. The best man won.

Anyone watch the Everton v Liverpool game at the weekend? It was a cracker wasn’t it! Great save from Phil Neville – a save like that deserves to have the resulting penalty saved as well 🙂

The fish tank is set up and should be ready to go on Sunday, I hope. It looks good. Once the fish have moved in and unpacked I’ll take some photos.

A kitten. Awwww, how sweet etc.

We had a load of kittens in the shop this week. They’ve all gone now I think. I said to Emma that there was one left over so they just let it go to fend for itself. It’s not true of course but you should’ve seen the look on her face! Sorry darlin 🙂

Sorry to have banged on so much about the F1. You wont believe quite how much I’ve decided to leave out so be grateful!

If you want another long read, I thoroughly suggest this. It’s all about global customs and what you should and, more importantly, shouldn’t do in certain countries. It made me laugh, I hope it does for you too.

Scott.

Darts update:
Truly bloody awful yesterday. I lost 2-0 in my singles and I was put into the doubles game as well and lost 2-0 in that as well! Hope it’s just a one off. Team lost 3-2 as well, our first of the season, so not a great night really.

Summary:
Position: 2
My Result: 2-0 loss
Team Result: 3-2 loss
Pairs: 2-0 loss

Totals:
My total (exc. pairs): 8 legs for, 3 against (4 wins, 1 losses)
Team total: 15 legs for, 10 against (4 wins, 1 losses)

Fish (opinions welcome), Birds, F1, Rugby, Football, Darts etc.

Hi.

I’m feeling very restless and irritable at work today for the second day running. I think these bloody squawking birds are getting to me. I can cope with the twittery ones but the bigger ones never shut up! Someone who works here got bitten right through the nose earlier by a parrot. He’s got two very nice puncture marks now. Lovely.

Rugby world cup final this weekend. Our recent amazing resurgence has put us in a position whereby if we win we’ll all be delighted, but if we lose we’ll all say “well, we know we’re crap. I don’t even know how we got that far”. What a lovely position to be in! A nice relaxing evening, win or lose. Hope we win though, obviously.

Paul Robinson having another blinder earlier in the qualification campaign – this was less his fault than the one the other day.

Now, football. Wasn’t the England game a disappointment? I don’t usually single out goalkeepers for criticism but Paul Robinson’s decision to palm the ball out right in front of him was terrible. Anyone who’s ever played as a keeper knows that if you can’t hold the ball, get it as far wide and as far away as you can and defend from there. If it’s a corner, so be it, it’s better than conceding a certain goal. The best he could’ve hoped for is for a defender to have got to it first to punt it out for a corner anyway so I’ve got no idea what he was playing at. I can truthfully say that I’d have done no worse – which when you consider he plays for the national team isn’t a great thing for him. I hear he’s out injured for Tottenham’s next game which will be a welcome relief to all you Spurs fans out there.

The F1 season comes to an end this weekend and I hope it’s a good race. It’s all set up to be one what with three drivers having a chance of winning the championship. I don’t really know who I want to win it now, all three drivers deserve it in their own way. Nevertheless, my Alonso Renault model will be sat on top the the telly as it has been for most of the season.

New Footy Manager game’s out today. I shall be starting as unemployed as always and seeing what it throws at me. the demo was very good so I’ve got high hopes for this game. If the last two have been anything to go by this one will work straight from the off too, unlike the older Championship Manager games which were nearly unplayable until an update was released on the net.

The longest and most confusing snooker tournament ever seen has got to a stage where I can understand it now – a knock out. Watching Ronnie v Joe Swail in the bottom corner of my screen at the moment. It’s a close one so far.

A Clown Loach. We’ll have one or two of these I’m sure.

Picking up a fish tank from Emma’s mate Fliss tonight. It’ll be nice to keep fish again. Got a few varieties in mind but not sure exactly which fish we’ll be getting but they’ll be tropical freshwater ones. Any suggestions, let me know by commenting. Pictures will be nice too. If you choose one we go for I might just let you name it! 🙂

Darts Update:
Team knockout this week and who do I face? None other than Jamie Wilson who just so happens to be number 34 in the world at the moment. I lost 2-0 and the team got stuffed (it was 4-0 when I went home!). We got to the semis last season but the team who we played won it so no disgrace really. I played alright but I’ve played better.

Well, I probably should get back to doing some work and finding a gun to shoot these birds with now. I might just buy them actually and release them into the skies of Leeds. People who work here shout “shut up” at them though which works for about 10 seconds. Stupid bloody creatures.

Enjoy the Grand Prix and the Rugby World Cup final,

Scott.

Post-Fire Working Arrangements, Noisy Birds & F1 Ending

Hello all.

I’m working in Leeds at the moment tucked away in an office in a pet shop doing my websites. The fire’s affected things quite badly over in Bradford. Everyone’s working out of a cold and messy warehouse. I’m glad to be over here out of the way. The boss is back tomorrow so hopefully things will start to sort themselves out.

The biggest annoyance about being here is that my office door is right next to a large collection of birds who never shut up! Still better than being in that warehouse without a computer though.

The F1 season comes to a climax in a week and a half. 3 drivers can win it; Lewis Hamilton, Fernando Alonso and Kimi Raikkonen. Should be a good fight for the title. The best thing about it is that it’s not on at a silly time of day like the last 2, it’s at 5 in the evening which is much more civil.

Darts Update:
Made it 4 out of 4 by winning 2-0 last night. Inconsistent but enough to win comfortably enough and I hit my highest competitive check-out, 120, which pleased me and my team.

Summary:
Position: 2
My Result: 2-0 win
Team Result: 3-2 win

Totals:
My total: 8 legs for, 1 against (4 wins, 0 losses)
Team total: 13 legs for, 7 against (4 wins, 0 losses)

Trouble at Mill

Hello all.

Well, a scary experience happened on Thursday when the ramshackle mill in which I work caught fire. We all managed to get out in time, thankfully. If we took one or two minutes more though we’d have been in trouble.It apparently started when a discarded cigarette butt was thrown down in the basement. Whose it was, we have no idea at the moment.

We were alerted to the fire at about 12:45. I’d just had my lunch which was an egg and bacon sandwich that I’d been looking forward to all day. Stuart, the new telesales bloke, came rushing upstairs saying that there was a fire and we had to get out. So we did. The smoke had just started coming through the door as I picked my coat up so I decided that this was getting serious and rushed out. Everyone else was making their way out as well at the time and as we jogged into the car park, we saw the smoke streaming out of the basement. By the time the last of us was out, the smoke was so thick you couldn’t see our hand in front of your face (to use a cliché – though it was true). The electrics failed just as we left the building.

While we were in the car park, after checking everyone was present and correct, the first fire engine came, which had been phoned by one of our warehouse staff – who decided to do that rather than alert us by phone, in person or otherwise. Nice one. He hang about for about 10 minutes then buggered off. You can draw your own conclusions if you like though I’m not going to start throwing accusations around on here as I’m not certain and never can be.

After some initial commotion where the firemen were asking how the fire started (we didn’t know), if there were any gas cylinders in the building (we didn’t know) and such like, they started getting the hoses connected and fighting the fire. 3 of 4 more engines had turned up by this point including one with one of those cherry picker things on top of it.

Smoke coming at us while in the car park.

In all, 12 or 13 fire engines were present at the height and around 50 firemen. The smoke which was drifting towards the supermarket car park where we were stood was choking at times, though the wind in general was blowing it all away from us.

Battling the fire.

It turned out that there were gas cylinders in the basement, where the fire started. They contained oxyacetylene – used for welding, i.e. heating things up to around 1000 degrees centigrade and is generally stored at around 2200psi. Sensibly, the supermarket and nearby houses were evacated and a 200 yard exclusion zone was put around the building which remained for 24 hours.

That whole side of the building is buggered. It burnt through all 3 floors.

By this time I’d decided to head off home as there was nothing I could do and waited to hear any news from my work colleagues.

A local BBC news report stated that the building was empty when the fire started. I would like to say that the report was complete bollocks as there were 6 people in the office and whoever it was who dropped the fag end.

The next day I went back to get my wages and hear any news. The fire brigade were still in attendance spraying cold water onto the volatile cylinders – which they had to do for 24 hours. The police still had the road closed off with policemen manning both ends. Two stupid women decided to take a short cut across the Lidl car park despite the attendance of police, fire services and both blue and red incident tape cordoning it off. One of the women was also pushing a pram with a young girl in it. What on earth goes through these people’s heads? When the police started telling them to turn back they simply ran so they could get across quicker. Eben the police weren’t prepared to go and stop them – which shows you quite how idiotic they were.

Anyway, today i’ve received some photos from one of my workmates of the damage done. My desk area is unaffected, except for the layer of soot sat over everything. The fire safety bloke reckons that all of the electrical equipment will be unusable and the soot gets into the workings of eveything. I’m off in on Monday so we can all salvage what we can and see what we can get done in relation to getting work back to some kind of normality.

The damage on the 2nd floor.

A thin layer of soot has settled on everything – even rooms that weren’t on fire.

My desk is in the far corner.

I’ll keep you posted.

Had the car MOT’d today. Cost about £250. Booooooooooooooooo.

Good result for United today, 4-0. I knew we’d tonk someone soon.

Darts Update:
I won 2-1 after losing the first leg. Had 161 left in final one. Hit 137 to leave double 12 while he was one 200-odd. Finished on double 3 in the end. 3 wins out of 3. Good stuff.

Summary:
Position: 4
My Result: 2-1 win
Team Result: 3-2 win

Totals:
My total: 6 legs for, 1 against (3 wins, 0 losses)
Team total: 10 legs for, 5 against (3 wins, 0 losses)