OCTOBER 31

SO LAST night I decided to format my MP3 player and then put the music back on again. There are loads of duplicate tracks on the player (a 2005 Creative Zen Xtra, known as "the brick" to some iPod Nano owners in the office) plus a lot of stuff I don't like anymore, meaning I'm usually pressing the skip button every three tracks. On top of that, lots of tracks are generating playback errors.

After going online to look up how to get to the formatting menu I wiped all the songs in a couple of minutes. But then, instead of just getting on with transferring the music, I decided to upgrade the firmware. Well, I didn't actually really decide, I just sort of did it. Like the time when I was five and just sort of took apart my grandad's clock that he received when he retired from the fire brigade. Or the time I just sort of decided I'd rather have red dashboard lights in my VW Polo than green ones, meaning me and James had to spend hours rigging up replacements once I'd buggered them up. So I deleted the existing firmware and downloaded the new version.

Oh dear.

I followed the instructions to the letter. Honest. But when I connect the player to the PC and attempt to transfer the software, the software claims the player isn't connected which it patently bloody is. Lots of checking on websites has got me nowhere so I'm left with a paperweight that resembles an MP3 player and I have nothing to listen to when at work. Arse. If anyone knows how to fix this, please tell me.

OCTOBER 28

EMRIC got on top of the telly in the bedroom at 2.30 this morning. He made a lot of noise and woke Ev up, who then shouted at me for making a lot of noise even though it was Emric who was making all the noise. Emric then got stuck and Ev had to get out of bed to get him down, for which I got the blame as I was too busy taking photos to get out of bed. Tomorrow morning, when Ev's at work, Emric is going to get the boot up the arse he so richly deserves.

AND our phone is still not working as the Vonage phone adapter thingy still refuses to connect to the Vonage network. Six calls to the "help" line resulted in us buying a new phone adapter and a seventh call resulted in us discovering we'd bought the wrong one. I have to get a USB to ethernet adapter for the cable modem, apparently. So with any luck the phones will be working again tonight, which is a shame as it's been nice having a week without Bank of America's debt collection agency calling every sodding day. But more on that later, as I have to return a phone adapter to Bastard Best Buy.

OCTOBER 21

JUST some random pics from our trip to the Orange County Swap Meet today. The family flies back to the UK tomorrow, but at least now Ev can make Yorkshire puddings.

OCTOBER 15

I WANTED to do a big update on our trip to San Simeon to see Hearst Castle, but I was too knackered when we got home on Sunday night and I'm too tired tonight. So instead here's some photos with some crappy captions.

Here's the 405 at the start of the trip.

We're on the 101 freeway at this point, but I'm not too sure where.

Still on the 101.

It's starting to look like Britain, only yellower.

We pulled off the 101 to visit Solvang, which is pretty much a Danish town only it's in California.

After lunch and some cinnamon Danishes we headed back on to the freeway towards Ev's cousin's place, where we were spending Saturday night before hitting Hearst Castle on Sunday.

When we set off in the morning, to get to the coast road that goes into San Simeon we had to go across hills which sort of look like the Brecon Beacons.

Driving through beautiful scenery like this makes you realise what an overdeveloped shithole most of Southern California - I mean where me and Ev live and work - really is.

Looks like fog up ahead.

And so it was. Shame, as the coastline here is stunning. But we weren't that far from the castle now.

After picking up our tickets and having a shufty in the gift shop, we set off on the five-mile bus journey up the hill to the castle. Well, it isn't really a castle but if the plastic abomination in Disneyland can be called one I guess anything can. Basically, it's a gigantic house built on top of a hill and decorated with priceless works of art Hearst collected from around the world. As you're not allowed to use a flash, most of the indoor pics I took are crap, but here's a load anyway:

We did two tours, each lasting over an hour and we had to climb about 600 steps. But it was well worth it to see the place.

After another look in the shop, we headed back out to the coast road and started the long journey home. After several stops we got back to Long Beach at about 11pm, all of us knackered. Of course, I was the only one who had to go to work today, but that's life.

OCTOBER 11 (LATER)

THE family arrived safe and well at LAX, but we nearly didn't get there at all thanks to a crash on the 710 which held us up for ages. It was just as bad on the way back thanks to the traffic on the 405. I had mum and dad with me in the Mini and my sis had to go with Ev as she's been threatened with instant death if her smoking starts me on the fags again, which led to the usual hysterical sight of a near-70-year-old Welsh pensioner (dad) trying to get out of the back of the Mini when we got home.

I do feel sorry for my sister. Ever since I gave up she's been nagged about doing the same. She's also been ordered not to smoke around me even though I've repeatedly pointed out that a) I have no interest in starting again and b) I wouldn't smoke a Lambert and Butler if my life depended on it. But as mum and, to a certain extent, Ev seem convinced that the merest whiff of cigarette smoke will have me rushing out to buy a pack of Marlboro Lights (although I'd imagine that even Silk Cut Ultra Milds - which one of my university lecturers once referred to as "a packet of fresh air" - would rip my lungs up), Lou is now paranoid about smoking around me. I even had to persuade her to light up in the Mini on the way to Ruby's tonight. It's not exactly fair on her so I hope mum will let up on the death threats at some point.

OCTOBER 11

THERE may be a gap in updates over the next week or so as the family's landing at LAX in an hour. And, thank Christ, someone's chucked the hazelnut Coffee Mate out.

OCTOBER 9

OVER the past few weeks I've come to believe that the coffee we have in our office is not actually coffee, but really vacuum-sealed packs of underpant scrapings. Nothing else can account for the taste of the stuff. Well, I say "taste", I suppose I mean "sensation of drinking hot water with underpant scrapings almost, but not quite, dissolved in it". The creamer powder we use doesn't help as it appears to be made from homeless people's dandruff, although that's an insult to homeless people's dandruff.

I've tried various ways to improve the coffee, from using real milk to simply not drinking it, but the other night I managed the impossible. I managed to make it worse.

The rather iffily-shaped bottle, pictured above in our fridge, contains a concoction called Cinnamon Coffee Mate. I stupidly added this to a cup of work coffee on the offchance the cinnamon might make it palatable. What I didn't realise is that Coffee Mate make this stuff out of pure, liquid sweetener. Not sugar, God no not sugar - sugar costs money whereas the runoff from the chemical factory that passes for sweetener here is much cheaper. At that moment I'd have happily eaten all the Reese's Peanut Butter Cups on the planet and when the awful, awful aftertaste (which is to cinnamon what Aldi own-brand blackcurrant squash is to Ribena) hit it was all I could do not to throw myself out of the window to stop the horror engulfing my tastebuds.

There's a hazlnut creamer too. I might give it a shot next week.

OCTOBER 7

FATE somehow restrained herself from taking a dump on my head tonight and instead served me a large helping of shit on toast. Picture the scene: the office, around 9.15pm. I'm done, logged off and heading for the door when Ani discovers there's been a fatal hit and run. I come back, restart the PC, tell the press I have to send pages one and four again, call the editor, tell her what happened, find out what she wants done with the story, log back on to the system. I get some background info on previous hit and runs (believe me, crossing a street in Glendale is taking your life in your hands) to help Ani. The story's written in fairly quickly, it's redoing the pages that take the time. I finally get them away around 10.50pm, 10 minutes late but 10 minutes isn't that big a deal. Then I phoned the press to tell them I'd resent one and four.

Only it turns out that they've already run the press with the original pages. They apparently had no idea that I was sending two pages again. There's nothing that can be done about it so I email the editor with my side of the story in case the shit hits the fan in the morning and head home after another 10-hour day.

SO THE rugby semis are decided: it's England v France (could go either way) and Argentina v South Africa (normally I'd say the Springboks, but at this rate it could be the Argies). So it's a case of vive la France for me.

OCTOBER 6

ONCE again my plans to do an update were shat on by the fickle arse of fate. Attempts to upload files were met with the message "your disk quota is full" (or words to that effect) meaning I couldn't do an update if I wanted to. And I wanted to.

Several emails passed between me and my host's tech support, theirs along the lines of "please send us the following information..." and mine along the lines of "why do you need my username, password, last four digits of my credit card and my blood type?" The problem was finally resolved Thursday night only for it to happen again Friday night. As it appears to be working tonight, I'm banging this out as fast as possible in the slim chance it might actually make it onto the Interwebs.

SO I'M sure all three of you are gagging to know what's been happening. Well, we crashed out of the Rugby World Cup to Fiji. Fiji, for Christ's sake. And to cap it all, bloody England beat Australia to make it through to the semis and France took out New Zealand. Wait, I have to repeat that. FRANCE BEAT NEW ZEALAND. No, I still can't believe it. So now it's down to the frogs to stop England making it to the final.

THE only other big happening over the last week was on Friday, when TimeWarner's inability to keep their Internet tubes clear meant we were prevented from doing any work. For anyone else on the planet this would mean a swift trip to the pub, but for me, Garland and Ryan it meant a swift trip to our office in La Cañada as the Internet was still up and running there. (In case you give a toss, the shitty, shitty software we use is all server-based). Ryan set off in his Civic and I took Garland in the Mini. We got there after fighting our way through Glendale's wonderful rush-hour traffic and nearly colliding with Ryan in La Cañada, immediately made coffee and began work on the papers.

And work we did, stopping only to pay the Domino's Pizza guy when he arrived bearing a ham & pineapple and a sausage & pepperoni and make more coffee. And go to the khazi, which for some reason is stacked to the ceiling with bogroll.

Now, one of the wonderful things about newspapers is that when incidents like this happen (the Internet going, not the pizzas being delivered) is that no one says anything even remotely like, "Look, you've lost three hours but don't worry about it, we'll adjust the press deadline for you". No, what actually happens is you have to fit five hours' work into two hours. We managed to get the Glendale paper away and then returned to our regular office, arriving there with several more pens than we'd left with.

Unfortunately it became obvious that we wouldn't be able to get the Burbank paper out on time, but instead of just packing up and going home (my idea) we did it anyway because we're professionals. Or are we just stupid?

OCTOBER 2

IS IT October already? I meant to do a big update for the end of September but I haven't had the time, so all three of you are going to have to wait for a bit. I will, however, be doing the bit about why all cyclists are twats in the near future. Honest.