FastFreddy2

Since all episodes of this are available, I have been trying to watch every programme, episode by episode in chronological order. Tonight I watched Series 2 Episode 6, "The night of the ladies in heels". >> Here << I have to say, how Series 1 generated a Series 2, I have no idea. The first series was like car-crash TV, and the second series so far, not much better. I guess that by the time Series 5 comes along (my first look) the show had become more professional, and more entertaining. The programme is up to Series 8 Episode 8. There have been a good number of 'specials' too, so the formula is working.

"You can please some of the people, all of the time ..... " My take on this is there's a tranche of people in any group, who won't be pleased no matter what.

When you've been around people who are hard of hearing as much as I have.... Having to repeat stuff is an every conversation occurrence. So I fall for the "What?" thing every time. Yesterday afternoon I spent 5 hours talking to a small family group with an average age of around 71/72. Fortunately the group was given an area fairly quiet, and away from the main social activity, otherwise there'd have been a lot of lip reading going on....

Which bit isn't clear?

Unless he wondered where you bought them, and did they come in his size? Yes unlikely, but not impossible.

You mean, like Furries? Hopefully not. Let's stick to shiny.

I don't think anyone for one second thought you were serious about bitumen for a leg covering, or the removal technique. However, suggesting to men they "read the instructions" probably fell on deaf ears ....

I doubt 'eau de essence blanc' is going to light up any "bedroom" antics, unless you mean one requiring the fire brigade? Would certainly create a challenging situation if one of the participants was prone to smoking a cigarette after a performance.

I wish they had been as judgemental when it came to presenters/"talent" and child guests. I'm a great supporter of commercial free/government sponsored independent/neutral TV. However, the BBC is getting to be like a promotional arm of a certain left wing political party..... "Independent" it ain't. It is working itself into becoming owned by Sky..... That'll be the day I stop watching the BBC and spend the license fee on Netflix.

Probably shiny when it first goes on. Maybe not so good for your skin, though probably cheap.

I haven't got numb feet, but they seldom complain about anything. If at all, it's wearing trainers in warm weather, even moderate weather sometimes. I suspect they complain because I've got fairly warm feet. Mrs Freddy appreciates them in winter, as I sometimes appreciate her cold legs to cool them down. I'm hoping this is a sign of good circulation? My ankles don't complain either, but they don't have the strength or flexibility of 30 years ago. It doesn't take much to push my ankle sideways, to induce what appears to be a 'trip'. Several times during the afternoon Mrs Freddy felt the need to help me stay upright, while traversing the alpine profiles of the Oxford Street pavements. Those of you familiar with the territory will know most dropped kerbs are preceded by 'lumpy' (shaped) tiles we believe are there for the benefit of the blind. (Warning of a kerb.) The texture does nothing for the traction requirements or anyone in a chair needing to stop, and hurts the feet of anyone wearing thin soled shoes, typically women in sandals... In some places these tiles are broken, or have been disrupted by years of HGV's crossing them. Even in flat shoes, some of the pavement takes some work to stay upright. One of the occasions I nearly tumbled, was while taking a photo of someone wearing OTK boots in (at the time) bright warm sunshine. The picture that nearly had me on my knees. As it turns out, her choice of footwear may not have been as unsuitable as I thought at the time.... As long as you keep your eyes on the pavement, an upright posture is completely possible. Maybe that's why my shoes don't get noticed so much there? Most people too busy looking at the pavement to worry about my antics. Thank you. I had to use Google to find out what that meant (I don't have to feign ignorance). It only takes a little practice. (Practice, practice, practice.) Sadly, as I age, opportunities become less and less frequent. I don't feel quite ready for my box yet though, so I plan to do what I can while I can. Given the weather on Sunday (humid with potential for rain) I was tempted to wear flat shoes. Luckily I chose not to.

Yes, but not their brand. (H.o.u.s.e. o.f. C.B.) They were made from a lovely material that was extremely stretchy. I imagine they would be delightful to wear should the owner enjoy tight clothing - as I do. I'm tempted to order up a pair, to see if they deliver their fit and shine promise.

So went to London on Sunday, and got there much earlier than usual. Rain was expected during the afternoon, so the plan was to get there and get back early. We arrived at 12.30pm and almost straight to the coffee shop for refreshment. It was warm, and humid. I wore my usual heels, the ALDO's in my avatar. "Peculiar" shoes, but stable and fairly quiet. As I'm not out in heels much it takes 15 minutes or so for me to get into my stride, and look less like I've just left hospital with two new hips ... We did the big stores in a more relaxed way than usual, getting there early had an obvious benefit. Finding a space for the car was quick too. Neither of us wanted anything in particular, and I'd already spent my money this month on a second bike, and car insurance. Mrs Freddy was looking for some last minute holiday bits, nothing else. A pair of heeled open toe shoes from Office at £15 down from £60 was too tempting. A jacket from Zara at £60 was bought under the auspices of their 4 week return policy, though Mrs F almost never takes anything back. (Including a £150 pair of leather leggings bought for £50, to try on again at home. Probably, still in the shop bag, now 4 or so months later.) With the weather closing in, (sky getting darker) we went the other side of Regent Street to Topshop, which happens to be opposite a Costa I'm fairly familiar with, and 120 yards from an M+S Mrs Freddy wanted to visit. Just as we arrived, we could feel a few spits of rain. Having reached our first waypoint, we went in rather than immediately making our way back to the car. Inside the store, the air was close, and uncomfortable. We didn't stay long, and when we got to the exit to leave, the rain had set in. Not heavy, but rain. After waiting for a brief interlude, we made it back to the canopies of the stores the other side of Regent Street only experiencing the rain crossing roads. While walking, my remark to Mrs F hours earlier kept coming back to me: "No, leave your pac-a-mac in the car, you won't need it." Wrong! The car was parked some 300 yards from the stores, we made use of doorways for respites, enough so we got back to the car fairly dry. 30 minutes later we walked into M+S at Brent Cross, and bought the items Mrs Freddy wanted. I never complain about any discomfort I experience when wearing a heel. It would be a contradiction given the pleasure I have wearing them, and I seldom have anything to complain about anyway. Today ... 5 hours walking around in a 5 inch heel and a change in humidity I'm not used to, sometimes trying to run (ha ha) across roads to avoid rain, frequently using pavement that resembled the texture of a ploughed field... By the time we had reached Brent Cross, the afternoons adventure was taking it's toll. After visiting M+S, we bought a weeks worth of milk, (4 x 2L bottles) and walked back to the car, all the stores having closed at 6pm. I carried the milk in two bags, one half of the load in each hand. The additional pressure on the balls of my feet was significant. The (eventual) relief of unloading the milk into the car was enormous with me thinking I might not make the last 30 or 40 yards without help with the additional weight. We left at 6.10pm, arriving home some 40 minutes later with torrential rain greeting us. British Summer?

Keeping up with the "mainframe" theme, flying and computer "glitch" .... Almost certainly, BA will be run on a mainframe because of the number of consoles (keyboard and screen to you) that would be needed throughout the world to access real-time booking information. Lots of other mundane stuff would be done in the background too I expect. Location of aircraft/crew/ground staff. Zillions of payment transactions .... Planning, costings, invoice payments, cash-flow management ... Most people would likely be thinking: Just turn it off and on again.... Thing is, restoring the last backup copy of the computer record status takes time, and there would need to be a rebuild of the updated transactions since the backup. (Basically, rebuilding the database up to the last known "good" position, then adding every transaction since that point.) Even if every transaction was backed up on-the-fly as it took place (mirrored), rebuilding the original from a mirror image ain't a 5 minute job even on a PC. I've been involved in some large IT projects, but I really wouldn't want to own the data managers job at BA this week. Assuming of course he's still there to get his arse kicked all around the company....

My background/interest has always been more fetish. Not life-changing fetish (already have that with shoes) but certainly more your pervy nightclub/bedroom sort of indulgence back before it became practically mainstream. The thinking was, anything 'naughty', was nice. As will be reported later, I went to London yesterday. Managed to get to Topshop as it started raining so the visit was short. Didn't spot your vinyl trousers (place was too humid for a long stay even if a nasty thunderstorm wasn't looming) but did find these at £59. Medium came up with a 28" waist and no Large on the rack. VERY stretchy and looked like a tight fit. Zippers on the ankles to help get them on. Very tempting.....

Here is a picture I sourced from that web site: Used because (a) I doubt the link will work in 2 months, (b) makes life simple (though getting the picture wasn't). Good find. I won't be buying, but an interesting site that ships to the UK.

You and me both. Horrible counterintuitive program that is truly awful and significantly more complicated than it need be. Has been "designed" (bolted together) more as a desktop publishing suite than a word processor. And in the past, with a price tag to match. Interesting article (to me anyway) about Wordperfect vs Word >> here << Exec summary: But others think Office allowed inferior Microsoft applications to win out over better products. "In reality, Office was a bit late to the party," wrote another reader. "While Word 2.x was failing to wow customers, Lotus 1-2-3, WordPerfect, and others were providing superior products. IMO, WordPerfect is still the superior product because it allows a savvy user to determine exactly where the formatting in a document is being adversely 'helped' by the application and allows deleting those control codes. Those were the leaders of the pack, Microsoft brought up the rear, then used FUD to crush them." But another reader countered with a chronology of WordPerfect's self-inflicted wounds. "Frankly, WinWord 2.x was a great program, well ahead of its time, especially if you ran it on Windows 3.0/3.0a as opposed to 3.1x. WordPerfect 5.1 for Windows (Q4-1991) was a dismal failure -- totally unstable, not feature-laden, and it even used a DOS-based installation program! WordPerfect 5.2 (Q1-1992) was a massive bug-fix, albeit small & fast. WordPerfect 6.0 (Q4-1993) was another buggy piece of crap, but it showed potential. Only when WordPerfect 6.0a (April, 1994) came out was there something worthwhile on the Windows front. By mid-1994, 2 1/2 years after the first version of WordPerfect for Windows came out, was there something reasonably stable. But by then, the damage was done and MS-Office 4.2/4.3 was available." Of course, others pointed out Microsoft didn't exactly make it easy for anyone to compete with its Windows applications. "MS Office crushed its competition for one reason and one reason ONLY -- undocumented application programming interfaces," wrote another reader. "WordPerfect ran into problems because they invested big-time in a new graphical product for the operating system Microsoft touted as the future -- OS/2 -- while Microsoft was busily writing a competing product using secret programming interfaces for their real operating system of the future - Windows. Microsoft created and exploited intentionally undocumented Windows capability to ensure that its competitors' products would run like a dog, thus ensuring MS Office was the only viable choice on Windows -- and of course locked users into Windows with monopolistic practices well-documented in the various lawsuits they lost. Good luck with your flight. As Shyheels rightly says, "hope you're not flying with BA" as chances are, you won't be for a day or two ....

To be fair, 30 years ago PC's weren't much more than glorified calculators or word processors. We used to use Lotus 1-2-3 for spreadsheets, and a very basic word processor that might have been called PE2. I used Wordperfect 5.1 (if I remember) for my reports, then it was upgraded to WP 6.0 for Windows 3.1 the product was killed off. Microswine brought out Word, and that helped bury WP. Back in the day, early Windows offered the opportunity of having two or more applications running at the same time, "Users" thought it was magic. I did all my college work using WP 5.1 on a DOS machine and it was an excellent product. Though I say so myself, it looked very professional, even by today's standards. Don't know I can say the same for the content .... Conversely, a mainframe could do a 15,000 employee payroll in an evening, and update the build requirements of a major manufacturer every night of every week throughout the year. Even today, a PC might struggle to do anything like as much in such a short period. Tesco and ASDA for example, will almost certainly be run on mainframes. Despite what Intel and AMD would tell you, multi-core processors in PC's don't function quite like a true multiplexing mainframe might, because the data buses are not duplicated, the operating system isn't designed for partitions ... blah blah blah.. Yep, not looking too clever here either. We had a thunderstorm this morning with rain enough to ensure a good electrical connection, only lasted 15 minutes from start to finish. More of the same promised for this evening. Tomorrow, (Sunday) we are hoping to have a wander in Londinium. Weather permitting. If Monday's weather looks better, we might defer to Monday.

You are not far wrong. Sometimes call "big iron" held in large air conditioned halls. Before personal computers, there were only computers. "Working memory" was very very expensive, as was storage. Computer code was very efficient back then. You could do a payroll run with (volatile) memory less than you have in a modern calculator. Probably less memory than you have in a smart television. Legend has it, the first man on the moon got there with the help of a 64k mainframe computer. Less memory than your microwave. These were often water or air cooled cores sat in an air conditioned facility. No food or drink anywhere. Teletype input, no screen. The typewriter taking in commands, like "start" "program XX". Data often fed in by 80 column punched cards, or punched tape. Hard drives where the size of washing machines (and about 20 times more expensive) with operators (me) hand feeding in different disks for different jobs. Completely clean inside, and cooled too. CRT screens came a bit later from from my training computer, but it added very little to the data entry mode. The computer were so expensive to buy and run, you tended to rent (with maintenance contract) from IBM or ICL. I worked at a Tesco facility for a while. Their printers - which could print paper faster than I could run - were £250,000 each. The big difference with mainframes vs PC's (until recently) was ... A mainframe might have 6 or 8 (or more) "partitions" (segregated virtual computers each tasked with running groups of users or functions) where PC's had a single processor running a single application for one (end) user. A mainframe might be running 100 or 200 hundred users. When you phone up for an insurance quote or banking function, it's likely the person at the other end of the phone is using a 'terminal' attached to a mainframe. They used to be 'dumb' terminals, but these days they'd be PC's with a mainframe port and interface. Oddly, IBM (Mr Mainframe to you and me) ducked out of the PC market early on, because they didn't think there was a future for them. Duh!

In one of my past "life's", I was a trained (mainframe) computer operator. While working in a data analysis/planning role, but not in a computer room, I once rang up the company Helpdesk to find out why my local (mainframe) printer wasn't working ..... "Is it switched on?" "Let me double check ..... " (Said I - thinking it was a daft question since the printer was never switched off...) "Yes, switched off, now switched back on ....." I had to reply red-faced, which fortunately couldn't be seen. Because it was a mainframe printer which needed 'attaching' the printer was never switched off, ever. (We often worked late.) But the cleaner, had plugged her vacuum cleaner into our socket, and put our printer lead back, but had left the power switched off. It NEVER occurred to me someone might have switched the printer off.... At the time it was as likely as walking into the office and finding the furniture gone. The most embarrassing phone call of my life, bar none.

After reading a promo suggestion these boots look good in jeans and leggings, a commenter asked how the wearer was supposed to use the loo if wearing these? Good point. That's a lot of boot and jeans to be hanging around the knees while sat down.

I've done it twice, and got screwed over both times. Not doing it a third time.... The irony of the booking mistake, the fella worked in IT.

Some years ago I went to a trade show in Europe with my (then) business partner. We both sat at our respective computers in our respective homes, pricing up flights. For some reason, his enquiry -with the same airline- was cheaper. Didn't matter what I did, I couldn't get my quote down to his, so I said we'd better confirm bookings for us both on his enquiry. I had nothing to do with the booking, confirmations, tickets .... I just paid my share. All was well, until we arrived back at the airport ready for a flight home. The check-in could find no record of our return flight. Time was ticking and 20 minutes in, we were not making any progress. Neither of us had 'smart' phones, so my partner checking his email confirmation wasn't immediately possible... Then one of the check-in staff had an idea, which proved to be correct. When I had made my enquiry, I have put in dates Mar/Mar. My 'partner' had put in Mar/May and hadn't noticed his error - at any time. That's why his enquiry was cheaper, the booking wasn't for the same day of travel. Our return flight had to be rebooked, with premiums for (a) rebooking and (b) immediate travel. We got home that night, but the single leg of the return flight cost the same as the pre-booked each-way flights. (ie doubled the cost of the trip.) You will not be surprised to know, the 'partnership' did not last, despite the business turning a profit (which the partner wanted to pocket rather than re-invest). He was only too happy for my money to continue to bankroll the business, rather than the business bankroll the business.

More "waders", this time used in a 'pop' promo video (apparently) .... Full article >> here << At a slightly more affordable price than previously mentioned, cuurently at £3190, though almost completely sold out ... Sorry, retailer doesn't want a link to their products .... Poor people need not apply ....

As worn by Mischa Barton at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival ..... (Still available. ) Ideal footwear for warmer weather .... Somewhere like Florida perhaps?