Sports Thoughts #1 F1 2008 Season Preview

Hey ho, a new post and a new themed post going on, there seems to be some kind of pattern forming… *rubs chin*
This is going to be the first in a series of posts loosely based in the field of sports. Half the battle seems to be coming up with a witty title that will survive the test of time.
EDIT: For now I’ve played the rhyme card and will go with the name ‘Sports Thoughts’. It’s a little lame but here’s hoping that the pain will lessen give time.

This should have come about earlier as this weekend (15th & 16th March) marks the start of the 2008 Formula 1 World Championship. Yes, it’s been four months since the end of the tightly contested 2007 championship which will hopefully be remembered for Hamilton’s unbelievable rookie season and the closely fought race for the title with Raikkonnen emerging the winner at the very last race, and not all the stolen documents, spy scandal which reflected a lot of negative attention for the sport.
That should be all behind us and so we can emerge from the winter testing and look forward to what should be a very competitive championship with a number of drivers already backed to challenge for the title with a handful more with the ability (and car/team) to win races.
At the start of the F1 season it always seems customary to have a look at how the drivers have moved between the teams over the Winter break. The most notable of all is Alonso being kicked out of McLaren and returning to the team where he made his name, Renault. Renault struggled with the switch to bridgestones last year, and already Alonso is playing down his chances of even challenging for wins. I was a fan of Alonso during the Renault days, but his behaviour last year has not won him any friends, and whilst the inter-driver squabbling probably happens a lot more than we are exposed to, his outwardly public attitude was pretty shocking and only healped to endear Hamilton to the fans, well British ones anyway.
In terms of other driver movements, a few rookies are finally getting drives but it is very much status quo. The Ferrari line-up is unchanged, as is Honda’s. With Alonso going to Renault, Heikki (sp) has gone the other way to McLaren. He also has the same amount of F1 experience, last year being his rookie season too although he should prove to be a more obedient servant for McLaren – they do hold the stance of treating their drivers equally, but the feeling very much is that Hamilton is their best shot for the title, although don’t be suprised to see Heikki being a regular on the podium if the McLaren’s are competitive.

Moving away from the drivers, it’s time to make some season-long predictions in that old-timely fashion. Pre-season testing is a rough indicator of the expected performance over the year. Considering that, the Ferraris must be the favourite, and despite me not being a Fan of Kimi (although his drinking habits are legendary!), I expect him to win his second title, with Ferrari collecting the constructors. That being said, I expect (and hope to the point of getting on my knees and praying) it to a very competitive season, with numerous drivers winning races. I think the season will pan out with Ferrari and McLaren fighting it out for the wins, whilst BMW will be lurking if the top 2 have reliability issues. I expect Renault to end up behind BMW, I’m sceptical that they can realistically challenge as the third best team out there.

Now F1 is probably the only sport I follow where they change the rules pretty much ever year. The current form of qualifying is my opinion pretty darn awesome, although its “fuel-burn” phase did come under criticism. That has been noted and cut from 20 minutes to 15 minutes which should hopefully allow the phase to match the previous 2 sessions for spectacle.
Technical changes notably include the banning of traction control and engine breaking. Also the electronics have now been standardised, with all the teams using the same unit. There have been mixed thoughts about the banning of traction control, but I hold the opinion that fast drivers will always be fast, and ultimately the better drivers should be able to adopt quicker. Hopefully this will allow Jenson to have a good season with his renowned smoothness behind the wheel, although the Honda ‘08 car doesn’t seem to have the speed – they’ve cured the woeful handling of the ‘07 car but that won’t be very useful if it’s very tardy.

The opener is again in Austrailia and has proved to be a great season opener in recent times. The teams aren’t sure exactly how competitive they will be when compared to each other, but do expect the familiar names to be heading up the timesheets before this weekend’s race.
Now all I have to do is break up my sleep pattern so I’ll be able to watch the coverage live and not have it ruined by ITV’s heavy editing for reruns and the habit of passing the coverage onto their digital channels which for those out there which don’t have at least freeview (there’s not many but people will be affected), they will miss out. It does make me worry how much importance is tied to ITV’s coverage if it constantly has to make way for Rugby etc. That being said my predictions for the race itself and I’m gonna go with a Raikkonnen win as much as it pains me.

The perils of being young and medicated

Hey, I got pretty worked up over this so I felt I had to take a rage-dump here. (Note: rage-dump being a term of Futurama origin I believe).

For those not in the know, I require a fairly regular prescription. I’m not going to go into details. The usual response I would produce when asked what it’s for, I would respond, “anti-depressants” and that usually stops the questions. I’m not actually prescribed them but for the purposes of the curious that is what I “take”.

Right, setting-the-story and I’ve required a prescription for quite some time now, I believe I may have been around 13 when it first started, maybe younger. Anyways, back then my Mother would go to the doctors to hand in a repeat prescription. A few days later it would be ready to be picked up and off to the chemists to be ordered. Most likely, another day as my stuff would have to be ordered in (I’m special like that). Obviously as I got older, I started to take over, fine you’re thinking. It was not a problem when I was at school, then college and then University and even my part-time job post University, because I would have time to visit the doctors/chemist to make these droppoffs/collections yada yada ya.

The problem has arisen thanks to myself being in fulltime employment now. This means that the doctors is only open Monday to Friday, and you’ve guessed it, the opening hours being those that I am at either work, or travelling to/from – i.e. no way I can physically get there on a normal working day. And so the fun begins…

The first nuisance was with having a prescription, it required me to book an appointment with the doctor when it came to registering. And when i finally sorted that out, the doctor didn’t have a clue who I was or what I was prescribed. Literally there was a golden opportunity to score some meds, unfortunately I didn’t have my fast-thinking head on (I rarely do these days it seems :s). I was also add that the doctor was super helpful explaining how easy it could be to make handing in and then collecting a repeat prescription. I’m not sure I’m into naming and shaming here and the legal ramifications of doing so. Expect a potential edit later.

With that mini-fiasco out of the way, the next step was setting up the collection service. Actually, this part was utterly painless. Thanks alrgely to this dear old lady who understood immediately my situation and sorted myself out no problem. The chemists are open on Saturdays thankfully so it’s easy to pop down and pick up the rpescription. I’ve been given a phone number for the chemist to which I am to ring to authorise them to pick up my prescription.
The next step is what gets my blood boiling.

This is the first time I’ve used the service, so with any luck it’ll be pretty streamlined after time. I’ve been advised to give the chemist a call to let them know when my prescription will be ready. I posted my repeat prescription through the surgery letterbox this morning and I was hoping to give them a call quickly just to find out when the prescription would be ready to collect. I thought I’d give their prescription number a call. Well guess what? The number is only available between 10am-12am and then 2pm-5pm. I had the pleasure of listening to a recording metion that thanks to demand the line would be only open druign those stated hours, and how I should not leave a message. I was pretty tempted. I’m sure I can’t be the only one who would potentially ring during their lunch hour, I mean come on.
Frustrated I headed back to my work desk, noted the more general, appointments number and planned on giving that a call, it would only be a very brief call. I gave that a ring, and that’s precisely what it did: ring and ring and ring and ring.
No luck there, clearly noone had the foresight of answering a phone joining the lunch period as people aren’t gonna call then? don’t be silly!…

Fortunately, I had to pop down the road laterthat afternon, so I could make the calls then, so hopefully that’s all taken care of. We shall see come Saturday, when I come to pick up the prescription. It’s never smooth sailing is it folks?

Just to reiterate my main point and a reminder of the title of this post, I can’t be the only person in this situation, i.e in full-time employment and requiring a (semi-)regular prescription. The truth is how could I be, but it seems like choices have been made which make it very hard to use my local GP. Quite recently, GPs came under pressure thanks to a pay increase but fewer surgery hours, and add to that the fact that callouts have been greatly reduced. There was call to extend these hours and I am in complete favour of that. It doesn’t have to be by much, perhaps one day in the week the surgery stays open till 8pm, or there is a Saturday morning surgery. Just something that makes visiting my GP easier. I guess I should be thankful that I don’t work on Saturday too, or else I would be pretty much entirely screwed.

You don’t have to be mad to work here…

b

ut don’t worry training will be provided.  That is indeed what Simon from work (that sounds a little weird to say that just yet…) told me on my first day.  Two days in and still not anymore comfortable I have to say.  Today was spent attending the training course for the software product (known as “Prestwood” or “Professional”) that users/financial planners would normally attend.

The first day was a real onslaught, a barrage if you will of financially technical information, and today was a day spent actually using the product which I will be providing support for in just a few weeks time, mmm not at all scary there…

It was very productive in a way to actually get the experience with the product itself.  It is a very powerful product which obviously has to cope with all the possibilities out there which can be done with money, or capital as I should really call it lol.

A lot of the day was spent running through a case study, so that equaled lots of data entry.  It wasn’t so bad a day, it was still a lot of information to take in, and I don’t think it’s gonna ease up for a while.  This guy, Chris, the other guy along with Simon that is based in the same room as me did actually say that we are not expected to know the complete ins and outs of being a financial advisor because if we did then we could do the job itself – all that is expected of us is to master the software and get it doing what it should be doing.

As an unexpected bonus, we went off to this pub for lunch on the company.  It’s actually been my first proper meal since moving into this B and B in Stourbridge if I’m completely honest.  Yep, we took a short drive out of Kinver with Diana, the trainer, and the two ladies, Lynn and Sue, who were on the course to the Fox Inn – a nice little place hidden away on a small road running through some woodland.  We got a look at the menu beforehand, and well a lot of it was unsuitable for me so that really shortened my options.  I did opt for the steak, which upon arrival was told that it was being done medium, which would have been fine.  In actual fact, the steak was pretty rare, very bloody in places, tough to cut and very chewy = not the most enjoyable meal.

My free time is spent catching up on TV shows.  I started watching season 1 of Curb Your Enthusiasm and have finished it off in the last day or two.  I actually looked to see if I could find some other seasons on the ol’ intermaweb but to no avail.  I’ve now started watching, or rather rewatching Heroes.  I watched a load off the back of a recommendation from my good friend Adam (thank you buddy) but then stopped when I went to Coventry for the course at JBC.  It then got aired on BBC2 and I again started to watch it from the beginning there, but lost track even quicker than the first time thanks to people’s drinking habits getting more and more unhinged.  But this time through I promise I’ll see it through, especially considering that season 2 of said show begins airing in a few weeks, possibly sooner.

It only dawned on me today that once I have moved in, I will have to sort out an Internet connection.  A lot of my stuff won’t be moved in to this new place until not this weekend, but the following weekend which will be only slightly less lame than my current situation in the B and B.

Here’s putting an end to my rambling…

Hey! Who stole my post!?

Another post and more playing about with some blogger hacks.
This time it’s the advent of post summaries. Not long after the birth of this blog, I’ve thrown some fairly large posts at it, and well even the author yours truly, has found them a bit daunting to go through.
Enter post summaries, hopefully a solution to the whole problem, and also a producer of more clicks on the blog (which for me obsessing over site tracking statistics, can only be a good thing!).
The idea works by again relying on CSS and good ol’ “span” elements to seperate up the post in question

and then place a “read more!” link on the page, hopefully just like the one you clicked, and then you’ll be taken to the whole glorious post and the treasures that lie within.
Unfortunately, this is just a bit of a trial so there are no goodies this time, but keep clicking and you’re bound to win – get hit by lightning a couple of times to increase your chances further..

Here’s thinking what else can be done to this blog which is not actually content-based?!?!…

Toilet graffiti…

Hey, overdue a few posts but for now I will share this pic I took, admittedly a little too merry on the last night of the Rythmns of the World Festival.

I’m not sure what it is about it that I really like, but it struck a chord with me and it definitely seemed a step above all the other graffiti scratched into walls which I’ve had the opportunity to read.