Off To The Tyre Shop

The outside temperature is 0.6°C which is a little cold for me. Volvo is sitting in the driveway with a punctured rear tyre. When the frost has gone I'm off to the local tyre shop. I pumped up the tyre late yesterday afternoon and couldn't see or feel anything sticking out of the treads or tyre walls.

Given that I am convinced that Volvo is trying to kill me, I hardly ever drive anywhere so it beats me how I pick up so many nails or screws or whatever, but pick them up I do, with monotonous regularity.

Last time it was an industrial staple right through the centre of the tread. At least I was able to get a repair on that one. The time before it was a screw through the sidewall and the time before that a six inch nail that some fun loving kid had wedged up against the tyre at an angle so that I drove it right in when I reversed out of the driveway.

Think I'll blame it all on the people at the end of the road who "got the builders in" over a year ago and have still got them there now. So far they seem to have had a two bedroom extension over the garage that required the roof to be extended by one third its original length, a loft conversion, a conservatory, a set of hand made designer oak garage doors, plastic windows, a powerboat and a BMW M3, neither of which appears to fit in the extended garage. Meanwhile Volvo has picked up two rear flats and it's pissing me orf.

Later

Turns out both rear tyres were write offs. I now have a perfectly matched new pair at the front and a couple of old scrubbers at the rear. Woo-hoo! On the way back home I nipped in to see Duayne, the "No I'm not doing it like that it'd stick up on top" mad barber, so I now know all the local dirt, have a collar that feels like it's full of pins and hair that just sticks out on one side. He also has a heavy head cold that he seemed very keen to pass on to unsuspecting customers.

Sony copy-protected CD problems

Microsoft's announcement that it would provide software to remove the offending copy protection code appears to have been the last straw for Sony. The company said that it was suspending production of the CDs and then offered to replace the 2.1 million discs that had been sold and withdraw a further 2.6 million from the shelves.

It seems that the software from UK company First4Internet that Sony had been using to prevent unauthorised copying of its music CDs, contains code 'infringing the copyright of several open source projects'. They seem to be losing the moral highground here.