Last Friday I had my Harley serviced in Oxford. I booked it in for first thing in the morning and was going to wait while they did it which they estimated at 2 to 3 hours.

So I thought I would put my new Sony UX180P to the test and took it along so I could catch up on some forum and blog reading while I was waiting. The only thing that put me off was the cost. Data costs via a GPRS network tend to be expensive unless you have a special plan which I don’t and could cost anything between £3.00 to £5.00 per megabyte depending on the network.

Luckily I stumbled across an offer which Orange was doing where on pay as you go you can get unlimited internet access for £1.00 for a whole day. Now the unlimited access is if you are using their GPRS or CSD but it turns out they are also doing a special offer for 3G data access for £1.00 a day as well albeit limited to 25 megabytes which would have been ample for me. Strictly speaking on the 3G data access you aren’t supposed to use it for modem access for computers.

Anyway, when I went to order my Orange World Daily Access for a £1 it didn’t actually give an option for GPRS or 3G. When I connected my PC through the built in 3G modem it connected to the 3G network by default rather than the GPRS network so I was happily surfing away at thoroughly useable speeds. The battery in the Sony UX180P lasted just long enough for them to carry out the service which was good as at least it drew my attention away from all the goodies and new bikes that they had there and temptation couldn’t prevail.

Last week I set myself a target to get in the top 10 results in Google for the search term “Philip Nicosia” without the quotes. I was a bit preoccupied yesterday to check but I had a look this morning and to my surprise I came in at No.2!

Hats off to Google for that one. Now you might think it pretty obvious to come in so high for a search term which is basically my name and the name is in the domain and I would agree.

However, despite my site being crawled and listed in both Yahoo! and MSN the same search term doesn’t find me in the top 100 results. I didn’t bother looking any further than that so it might be somewhere. I guess there is more work be done there.

It will be interesting to see how long it takes Yahoo! and MSN to catch up.

Bugs our rabbit was taken ill yesterday afternoon. She was fine in the morning and her usual bright and breezy self but around lunchtime I noticed that she was acting out of character and was listless. I immediately called the emergency vet and took her to see her. She seemed fine at the vets and even perked up a bit and the vet gave her some antibiotics and something to help her digest food just in case that was the problem and we came home.

She was still very quiet for the rest of the day but was eating a little bit so we thought she was getting better. Around midnight we checked on her again and she ate a little more but sadly when we woke up this morning she had passed away during the night.

It was really unexpected as she was only 2 years old and a very happy and active rabbit. We only had her for a few months but each and every day was a pleasure to be with her. She would always be around your feet in the garden and used to enjoy exploring her surroundings. We would find her in the strangest places and if you weren’t careful she’d be running up the stairs in the house to explore some more.

We will miss Bugs and her bunny little ways.

We decided to bury Bugs in the garden in her favourite spot underneath a rose bush. She was always happy there watching the world go by and now may she rest in peace.

I sold my VW Beetle and decided to get a Mercedes SLK230 to run around in during these hot summer days. The Beetle was okay but we didn’t find it that comfortable and even though it had air conditioning it wasn’t powerful enough to keep cool. Whether it was because it needed recharging or the sheer amount of glass in the Beetle letting all the sun and heat through I don’t know.

So I got the Mercedes and as with any car you get I guess you have to get used to things being different.

The first thing that caught me out with it was on returning to the car with bags of shopping I couldn’t figure out how to open the boot. No matter what I did I couldn’t unlock it. We managed to get it open in the end but it was more luck than judgement. It turns out that when you unlock the car with the key fob remote it only unlocks the drivers door and you have to press it again to unlock the passenger door and the boot. I should have expected that really as my Beetle was the same. Must be a German thing?

Now what really puzzles me is that I kept struggling to get the ignition key out. The engine had stopped, the hand brake was on and the gearbox was in park but it wouldn’t let me take the key out. Eventually I did manage but wasn’t sure how I did it so I got the manual out to read if there was anything in particular I had to do to get the key out.

Now here is the puzzling thing. It turns out that even though the engine is off, hand brake on and gearbox in park if you have your foot on the brake it wont let you take the key out? Now why would that be? I’m sure there must be a perfectly logical reason for this but I for one cannot think what it is. Perhaps someone could let me know.

I love the summer holidays. Not because I’m a student but because for 6 weeks whole of the year the roads are so much quieter. No Mums taking the kids to school in their big 4 x 4’s clogging up our already congested roads and adding to all the greenhouse gasses. On a journey that would normally take me 30 minutes now only takes 20. Think of how much extra time you have on your hands over the course of the holidays.

Whatever happened to kids walking to school? When I went was younger we all used to walk to school, rain shine or snow. It was about 1.5 miles each way and took about 30 minutes. Now the furthest most kids walk is to the car. No wonder there are so many fat kids around nowadays. They just don’t get the exercise anymore.