Give Blood

Give blood? I do. My next pint ("that’s nearly an armful" © Tony Hancock) is being taken tomorrow. Here’s all the details you can want.

Now, there’s no excuse is there? There are even sessions at Ebbw Vale rugby club next month.

For Sale

In work there are for sale and wanted boards on our company Intranet. The best entry in recent memory is:

"For sale: A concatenated wardernharl. Original 3 plistled model with bi-valved down tubes and double grinded splatwhistling tweakers. Never used, still in cage. £42"

I tried to buy it but got the message: "Sorry Martin, sold out. By luck though I've just had an attennuationary scrimslicer in. You can have it for £10 if you've got a small arms licence or £15 if only a small knees licence."

Fantastic. The spirit of Spike Milligan lives on.

Fraud Notes

I heard a story this week of a guy whose daughter used to use the dog's name to register on websites. Shortly thereafter their dog (Oliver) started receiving a lot of junk mail. Included were pre-approved offers for credit-cards.

All of this correspondence went directly into a shredder and they had a good laugh about it. The daughter has been told not to use their "actual address" and the problem stopped.

Now the papers are reporting that a woman in Australia used her cat's name to apply for a secondary credit-card, and was able to get a new account for the feline. The stated reason she did this was to prove that it's too easy to commit credit-card fraud.

She (the woman, not the cat) is quoted as saying: "You don't need to hack into the internet when you can just steal someone's credit card number and create a card for yourself."

In fact, had Messiah been a fraudster – and not a cat – Katherine wouldn't even have known the card existed. She wasn't notified that a second card had been issued. Messiah could have put a different address and the card would have been sent there and I wouldn't have known.

If it's that easy for a cat to get credit, imagine what a dog could get.

And here’s a great story, with lots of pictures, giving you all good reason to go out and buy a shredder today.

Link of the Week

Food Down Under is a library of thousands of recipes. All you do is type in a couple of ingredients and it comes up with suggested dishes. It lists recipes by country too. A good find (thanks Jon).

Cute pictures of the week

German photographer Tanja Askani has a huge array of wonderful wildlife pictures up on t’internet, but these real life Bambi and Thumper are the best of the bunch. (Link courtesy of Popbitch.)

This week’s sign of the apocalypse

"People should be thankful that a Lib Dem's going out with a straight girl." - Cheeky Girl Gabriela

Rugby Notes

A disappointing trip to the Talbot Athletic Ground on Saturday, where Aberavon proved to be too strong for Ebbw Vale. We lost 39-19.

Coach Alex Codling complained in the press (or failing that the Western Mail) that we were not helped by the "regional" Dragons by not making any hooker available, but while a lack of line out ball didn’t help, it wasn’t the difference between winning and losing.

Aberavon played the referee perfectly, living on the edge of offside and spoiling wherever possible. They were the first pack to match us up front, and they had some real pace amongst the backs too. Their scrum half Danny Hawkins was a complete pain in the arse too.

Our plus points? Well, the rolling maul looked good in places, and a couple of chances were well finished. We certainly weren’t 20 points worse than Aberavon though. Nevertheless, there was a distinct lack of composure and moves seemed to be overly hurried. A bad day at the office.

Ebbw Vale stay top of the Principality Premiership however (now with just a two point lead). Adopted home town Pontypridd are second and the evil empire Newport are third.

Scorers: Tries for lock Rhodri Dicks and both wings, Simon Hunt and Andrew Bevan. Two conversions for Dai Langdon.

Highlights: Not too many. The scrum looked as good as ever and the maul is now one of our key weapons.

Lowlights: Poor start (14-0 down after ten minutes) from which we never really recovered. Need the injury list to shorten soon, especially at numbers 2 and 7).

NFL Notes

The evil Indianapolis Colts saw off Baltimore in a dismal touchdown-free game. The other AFC game saw New England win a nailbiter at San Diego. In the NFC, New Orleans had a great win against the Eagles. The Chicago Bears won a tough game in overtime against Seattle.

So, in my predictions I went 2 from 4.

Next week it’s New England at the Colts and the Saints at the Bears. My picks in the championship games? The Pats and the Saints.