Apple iPhone

The Apple iPhone is here (Well in the states anyway).

I cannot believe the amount of hype something has just because of the branding, I must say Steve Jobs must have the easiest job in the world, simply badge a product "apple" and it will sell by the millions and even have stupid people queing for days to get one.

Then the money makers who queue, buy one and make a couple of hundred quid on ebay.

I love my gadgets, but am definately not going to shedding out £500 on a mobile phone.

I have an iPod - its only 4Gb and doesn't play videos, but it does me.
I have a phone - which makes calls, has 1Gb of memory for music and 2Mp camera
I have a PDA - which gets my emails, tasks, internet access and a broadband modem
I have a camera - Its small and fantastic.

and now (fanfare please).....I have a iPhone (ish)

Video

Knee Update

3 weeks on, I am still in agony with my knee, luckily thanks to my company healthcare, I managed to get referred to a consultant at the local private hospital, a 2 week wait and today was my appointment.

8.45am - appointment with the consultant, who advised I would need an MRI Scan as he thinks it may be lose cartilage in my knee (Meniscus Tear), he doubts it is ligament issues or "I'd know about it".

MRI scan arranged for 12.30 TODAY - now that is fast

I have now had the MRI scan and although not obvious from the scans, the consultant believes it is what he first thought, so I have to have some keyhole surgery (Arthroscopy) to sort it.


Booked in for next Saturday.

I must say I am very impressed with private healthcare, and nervous of having my first ever "operation".

OMFG

From Britains Got Talent
Paul Potts - A guy who works at Carphone Warehouse and sings like bleeding Pavarotti. Surely the winner



Clip from Youtube - myredroom

Off the road I have knackered my knee and I don't know how....

After wetting Leahs head on Saturday (and boy did it get wet), I have knackered my knee, not through drunken dancing, not through falling over, but by doing nothing. I don't know how it happened, but woke up Sunday morning in absolute agony, unable to bend my leg, unable to straighten my leg, i thought I could "walk it off".

All day Sunday I tried walking it off - no joy

After googling for "inner knee pain" it sounds like ligament damage.

Went to work Monday thinking it was just a twinge, had to get colllected from work as I couldn't move. My lovely work colleagues told me to go and get it sorted and call BUPA (after taking the p*ss of course)

I don't really like wasting peoples time, so didn't call the Doctors, didnt call BUPA and didnt go to the hospital...

Then I finally gave in and went to A&E on Tuesday night

I sometimes wonder why we have A&E, why not just "E"
My evening consisted of;

• Waiting to be seen by triage (20 minutes)
• Waiting to see a Doctor (1 Hour 30 minutes)
• Being seen by a nurse (3 minutes)
• Waiting to see a Doctor (1 Hour 15 minutes)
• Being seen by a Doctor (3 minutes)
• Waiting for some pain killers (ETA 3 hours)

Doctor asked what I'd done, i explainined everything and said I think it's my ligament, after shooting me down for appearing to be a know-it-all, he advised that I have damaged my ligament and te Rest/Move/Ice/Raise my knee.

I gave up waiting for some pain killers and decided to go and see my Doctor/Bupa
After seeing my Doctor I now have an appointment with BUPA on 6th July by which time I expect my knee to have healed or my leg to have fallen off.
NHS eh, gotta love em.

Gadgets.

Its been ages since I've had gadgets to talk about, I have been through a few but nothing really worth a mention.

Till very recently, my personal phone has been the QTek 8500, a small flip smartphone perfect as a "socialising phone" (a phone you could take out on the p*ss with you).

Unfortunately due to a major problem with my jean back pocket, some keys, my arse and a chair, I managed to sit on the phone cracking the screen.

This led me to revert to my officially upgraded Orange phone, a Nokia N73...
I havent had a Nokia since back in the days before SPVs came out, needless to say I ave been completely useless with it, different operating system (I know it's a phone), different way of synching, texting, accessing contacts, and altogether not for me.

After a nice chat with my Vodafone man, I managed to get my hands on a HTC Vox, which accepted my Orange Sim with a smile and I am now in the process of setting up.
Good Points
Windows Mobile 6
Brilliant for working with MS Office Documents
Bluetooth
Wi-Fi
Sliding keyboard
2MP Camera

Bad Points No 3G
eMoze synchrnosation does't work
No touchscreen
Larger than a standard "Candy Bar" Phone
No Built-in GPS

My work phone is split between the HTC Artemis or the HTC Hermes (depending on what I need it for). The Artemis is great for the built-in GPS and is size, the Hermes is just a great all-rounder and has the keyboard.

The only devices out there worth looking at are the HTC s420 (the next Qtek 8500) and the HTC Athena (Hmmm).

Handyman Byrne

• Leah is now here
• The football season is over and we have been promoted
• I'm back at work (tomorrow)

Its time to focus on something to keep me busy....

As Bigfoot "Jamaica Feet" Cookie has blogged on numerous occasions, he's a dab hand at building and creating things, rather like a one-man A-Team

I have therefore decided to do 2 things.

1. Easy
Install a 2nd sky box in the bedroom, this way I can send SWMBO upstairs to watch crap soaps while I sit downstairs watching HD football, HD Discovery channel etc.
2. Not So Easy
Convert part of my garage to my office*

Rather than use up a bedroom for my office that could otherwise be used as a 3rd bedroom (by who I don't know), I had a Jack Daniels induced brainwave to convert part of the garage

My (our) garage was great when we moved in, so much room, it's now full of the crap SWMBO wouldn't let me bring in the house. I am going to sort it out and bin /sell/give away.

As said garage is 24ft Lond and 11 foot wide, I guess I could use the last 8 foot depth and 11 foot width as my office, add a door, bars across the window and Bobs yer uncle.

So there you go, the planning is straightforward, lets see how easy it is in practice. I haven't yet set a goal to have this done by - why fail.....

Links
Sky - 1 2 3
Building - 1 2 3 4 5

* When I say "Office" I also mean a Boys room, to include another sky box, LCD TV, Music System etc....

Super Duper RamsWe are Premiership, say we are premiership

Well done Derby County

A day out to Wembley, next years season ticket purchase and the stress of the playoffs has most definatlely been worth the wait/money/stress.

Unlike my Nottingham Forest and Yeovil Town supporting friends, we went all the way in what has been dubbed the most expensive football game in the world. (worth £60 million to the winner).

and we did it...... Oh yes we did it.

Well done super Rams, well done Billy Davis, and well done me for not getting completely rat-arsed that I slept through the game.

Shame it was/wasn't a sellout. The attendance was 74,500 of the 90,000 capacity, maths definately didn't add up there. Derby sold out in less than a day of the tickets going on general sale.

Garstang - Nothing to say?, if not, please change to your blog, Villa are no longer the "Midlands only Premiership Team", you will get beat by Birmingham AND Derby next year.

Back to work

Leah...How many Goals will Derby win by on Monday?

My paternity leave came and went, my week off also went just as quick, now its time for me to go back to work* and back to some kind of normality (and a rest)

I love fatherhood again (v3.0), however its been very hard work, not the baby part, that's easy (for me), Mummy breastfeeds so I can't help there, however trying to support mummy is the hard work.

Cooking I love,
Tidying I don't love,
Cleaning I hate,
Ironing I haven't

Despite all of the above, I still feel useless as I can't help through the night

Whoever says Mothers and/or housewives are lazy and should "get a real job" have never been either.

I have learnt in the past 3 weeks;

1. Too much sleep is not good for me
Going to bed early in case I got woken up by crying, only to sleep completely through it all and wake up in the morning made me feel worse than the XBozx days of 4 hours sleep a night - Althugh i did help SWMBO by bringing "Me Daughter" downstairs at the crack of dawn on a few occasions to let mummy sleep.

2. The internet is a great/bad resource for newborn baby information.
Great - babycentre and babyworld among the best, coming a close second was "12 Things No One Ever Tells You About Babies"
Not Great - You can diagnose just about anything with a quick google, this isn't always good, modern day medical dictionary where you can find something wrong with yourself

3. Midwives are great
Despite the bad press and crap the likes of the BBC and my local paper say, Midwives are excellent.
STOP SLAGGING OFF MIDWIVES - the government/NHS could save millions in compensation claims by employing hundreds if not thousands of extra midwives.

4. NEVER EVER... ...Believe your missus, if shes says "Never again" when in labour. SWMBO walked out of the hospital and decided she wanted another baby - Best contraception ever !!!!

5. Visitors are great, but make it very hard work
Everyone wants to see your new bundle of joy, your new bundle of joy loves being cuddled, however once the visitors have been and gone, your new bundle of joy does not want to go to sleep at night unless being cuddled, I was given the piece of advice - try and get all of your visitors round in the first week. This was impossible, I think we might be half way through now though. The amount of cards and gifts we have recieved is unbelievable

6. Be there for each other
Tiredness is a recipe for arguments, don't let it

7. Listen/Dont listen to advice.
This has been an adventure - everyone likes telling you how to do things, the way they did things 30/40/50/60 years ago. some good ideas, some bad, and some Im sure are now illegal

* After Wembley with the boys to watch The Rams in the playofff final.

Our New Arrival
Monday May 7 was indeed a very special day for me (and SWMBO I Guess).

The birth of our baby daughter Leah

Many thanks to all staff at the Derby City General Infirmary, in particular Annabelle for the safe delivery of my little angel

Hence the reason for my lack of blogging, I have once again been enjoying every single minute of fatherhood.

Already She has the Byrne frown mastered

Asleep in front of the fireplace

Resting (again)

One proud Mummy

The look of love

Trying to hide under the towel

Daddy will never let you go

No Joke

An Englishman, Irishman and Scotsman each run a football team.

Unfortunately this isn't a joke, it's real life and we need the Scotsman to have the last laugh.....
Come on you RAMS !!!

EDIT: 23:06 - Denied... Lost to Crystal Palace which means we now have to enter the dreaded playoffs
Final to be played Monday 28 May

BBC Sport - Championship table

Thank you Xbox !!

Just as I was getting some normality in my work/life/sleep balance, confirm release of Call of Duty 4: Modern Combat.

I was even at the point that I didnt feel the need to switch my XBox on every single day. No doubt time spent getting the nursery ready for our baby, buying Nappy Stackers (and other stuff you don't really need) played an important part of this.

Obviously I need to back to having no sleep... which is where the Xbox - More importantly Infinity Ward has come to the rescue.

We've all been a bit slack on the XBox online front, but I for one will have lots of sleepless nights any time now....

Smokers eh!!

Heard today smokers should be given time off work for "giving up smoking classes" in light of the upcoming ban on smoking in public places
What a load of tosh

Clearly I'm biased as I don't smoke, but I still think allowing people time off work is completely unreasonable.

I like a drink, does that mean I can have Friday afternoons (and Monday mornings) off to attend "giving up drinking" sessions, that would be great, I can go off the rails every Sunday night, an get over it Monday mornings, then "Be strong" on a Friday afternoon where I can go to the pub and not drink....

Whatever next...
... Drugs, Sex, - Sign me up, I'll never have to work again in favour of trying to give up bad habits.

Birmingham - 21 April 2007 - Picasa Pics

I finally made it to the Meet up with my ex-colleagues from Royal Mail IT

SWMBO being 2 weeks away from having Baby Byrne meant that I couldn't stay long, couldn't drink too much and was on phone alert for the whole time.

I got there around 3.15 to find the usual riff-raff of Mr Maloney, Mr Tope, Monster Masterson and the Bigfoot Cookie. - See cookies "version" ----> Here























































I was greeted with "YOU FAT BASTARD" by Gaz "Machinist" Tope, had my age guessed as 39 by a young looking 62 year old Sean.

What a Welcome back - It was great

We exchanged stories of working together, all but one of us moving on different things.

It was only 3.15pm and Tope was already pissed, unfortunately I had missed Wendy (Hello Wendoi), who came and went. Taoski couldn't make it due to a last minute change of plan, Garstang failed to turn up or let Cookie know (let down) so it was left to us few.

After a few jugs of London Pride or something disgustingly resembling Ale, (I had Grolsch)
it began to get messy, Sean drifted in and out of sleep and Cookie got completely wasted, even the phone call from his Boss where he started out being as sober as a judge to attempt the "I'm not pished" voice, later to develop into a slur at which he confessed to being "complety and utterly wan*ered".

He also managed to send a text to his wife explained that he was "bollocksed" his daughter read the text and now knows a new word.

6.00 pm - Mid Drinking food break - Lamb & Mint burger (cookie) and Salmon & something pie (me) filled the void created by beer
6.30 pm - Tope sloped, remembered he had kids and they needed to put the kids to bed.
7.00 pm - Cookie crumbled - decided he could take no more and called up lil' bruv (whos massive) to come g"get big bruv out of trouble" - Lil bruv couldnt come so didnt have a car. Cookie decided to get a taxi - He was a mess.
7.15pm - Byrne crashed - Had to catch the 7.30 train back to reality.
Alan probably carried on (and is still probably drinking now)

Lovely SWMBO picked me up from the station, so i rewarded her by ordering a pizza (well she had 2 slices).

Drifted in and out of sleep while she watched greasy joseph technicolour is the word dreamcoat or something.

What a brilliant day - Can't wait till the next one !!!

I do still miss the guys I worked with in Brum, we really were a good team, although we worked to the rule of 15 minutes work every 4 hours, in the 15 minutes we actually did 4 hours work.

That was the last "session" for me for a week or so as I am now officially on alcohol leave pending our arrival, although with Sisters birthday (25th April), Mossys 30th (26 April) and Bossmans 40th (28 April), it's very inconvenient.

Hormonal 38 week pregnant woman will always win though...

Bless

The Internet Reposted

Saw this video at site that I wont link to here as it's Definitely NSFW - (Not Safe For Work if you didn't know)

"This is a look back at some of the virals, crashes, accidents, stunts, mis-haps, bloopers & calamaties over the past few years of the internet. Some of your old favorites will be here."

10 Minutes long - wait till you get home !!!



Created by and Full credit/thanks to Skins21

Happy Birthday Lauren
-----------------------------
Its my daughter Laurens' 11th Birthday today.
Happy Birthday Lauren
Lots of love and hugs
Daddy xx

Ex-box

Well after 4 months of no sleep, no social life and non-stop talking about it, I have decided I am going to sell my Xbox. This may come as a shock to some, but I have realised there actually is more to life than staying up till all hours playing games online with a bunch of mates.I'll be putting it on ebay tomorrow for £300. If anyone knows of someone whos interested, drop me a comment.

• Xbox 360 Premium
• 2 Controllers
• Play & Charge Pack
• Games
• Rainbow Six Vegas
• Ghost Recon 2
• Kong
• Prey
• PGR3
• PES6
• Call of Duty 3
• Gears of War
• Crackdown

Boxed and ready to go. :-(


Posted on April 1st - aka April Fools Day, even SWMBO fell for it.

XBOX Live - Down - Now whateports went out last week that some peoples Xbox live accounts were hacked, of course Microsoft denied this, why wouldn't they - how on earth could live accounts get hacked?

Monday came an email arrived from Xbox Live announcing scheduled maintenance planned for today, I thought this could be in response to the PS3 release, my guesses included

• Halo 3 beta released
• Web browser addition
• 360 Dashboard update
• Functionality for DivX movie playback

We all wait with baited breath, unable to beat/play/speak to each other online, I had to resort to an evening in the real world with SWMBO.

When she realised she's better off when I'm in the virtual world she went to bed, I wanted to find out more about the Live downtime so.....

"MICROSOFT ANNOUNCE XBOX LIVE ACCOUNTS HAVE BEEN HACKED"

OOps !!!!

Who would be clever enough to do this I hear you say, how could people hack accounts of people who only use this account to play online or check stats on xbox.com

Simple :-
By calling Xbox Live customer service and "Pretexting" - It was that simple

Come on "Gatesy" get it sorted, dont let me PS3 fanboys bitch any more about Microsoft.

news.com - TG Daily - Techshout -

Updates

ASDA - to vent our frustration my fellow Xboxers wrote to ASDA and UbiSoft (Authors of GRAW 2).

• Asda came back stating they weren't aware of this policy, followed by this is their policy....
• Ubisoft came back stating they will investigate.

If/when I hear anything back from either companies, I will update.

Pipex

Result... I managed to speak to the account manager at my company regarding these problems, unfortunately I can't name them but my unlimited connection is now back to unlimited.

I have no idea how one would go about sorting this out based on a purely residential only connection, but where a considerable amount of money is involved, it clearly shows that money talks.

BOYCOTT ASDA - NOW !!!!!!
ASDA Have ruined my life...

Well day, on a week of Shit Pipex, I now add ASDA to my list of Shit Companies.

Ghost Recon 2 was released today, happily gathering 8 lots of £40's I trundled off to ASDA to purchase 8 copies, to be told

"You can't have 8 copies as this is classed as wholesale"

What Bollocks...

After walking off in disgust, I decided to walk back and speak to the manager, who... wouldn't come out of his big leather chaired office, and resorted to telling me over the phone that I couldn't buy 8 copies.....

Fair enough, walked straight to gamestation, they quite happily sold them to me and even gave me £2 off each copy.

Result...

So ASDA, be warned, I will be soon visiting your ****** branch to purchase 20 cases of Alcohol, wait for you to scan them in then change my mind, due to my own policy of not having the piss taken out of me.

Heres the letter from Pipex that's got me into a rage

Dear Damian Byrne
Important notice regarding your broadband usage

Pipex introduced network traffic management in 2005 to help manage the network and provide a fair service for all our customers particularly during busy periods of the day. The usage behaviour of a small minority of our customer abase has led us to introduce, with immediate effect, a Fair Use policy online at www.pipex.co.uk/legal.

We have established that your usage levels are in excess of the levels we would expect for normal home use, and your behaviour along with a small number of other customers may be having a detrimental effect on the service available for the majority of the Pipex customer base.

How do you define "Normal"

We would like you to change your usage behaviour immediately or let us know if you think we have got this wrong, If we don't see a reduction in your usage in the next 14 days we will contact you and may take further action.

In addition to changing your usage behaviour there are a number of alternatives for you to consider:

* You can move to our Midi broadband product which has a usage allowance of 15GB a month with the option to purchase more allowance on a monthly basis. We would allow you to continue with your current level of usage on this product as long as you confirm in writing to us that you are complying with our Acceptable Use Policy and using your connection for normal home use.

* You can switch to our sister company Bulldog Broadband where the service may be more suited to your needs. You will need to purchase a telephone service and line rental with a new 12 month contract.We advise that you visit bulldogbroadband.com first to check that you can receive their service. If you then decide to take this option please call us on 0800 107 5902 to request a MAC code.

* You can switch to an alternative provider that offers you unrestricted use of your broadband connection. If you wish to take this option then please call us on 0800 107 5902 to request a MAC code.

Finally, please can you confirm to us in writing within the next 14 days using the attached form that you are complying and will continue to comply with our Fair Use and Acceptable Use Policies