so22saint

Norwich

Loughborough. I went to Loughborough - it's a bit mental as it's possibly the most American place in Britain. Once the art college merged into the Uni (the year I left - the ****ers), it turned into High School Musical! I popped in last September and there was a bunch of lads shooting hoops as the music and drama lecture turned out - felt like walking through a casting for Fame (or Glee for you younguns). Anyway, best bits were the fact it's all on campus, they aim to get you into halls for years 1 and 3 so it's a good, safe lifestyle, the town is a bit of a whole but has 3 clubs and a couple of decent curry houses, and it's 20 minutes closer to Southampton for the football (I had a season ticket through all 4 years - ****). The art department had loads of investment when it was taken over, and the student union is absolutely superb. Towers Hall if she gets a choice - great social life in a listed (though ugly as sin) building at the lower end of the campus. Used to have single sex floors in the east tower, mixed in the west.

I'm from Totton - result :-)

The Flying Swan obviously... Seriously, It's the 65 from Richmond as well, and 25 minutes from there (or a 2 hr wander along the river) so go with the crumpet option. In which case The White Swan is good, and there's an All Bar One near the riverside. On the river is a Pitcher and Piano and a Propaganda or whatever it's called.

I have a mate who's very very high up in the NHS, a client who we provide services for who support FTs, a wife who is an intensive care nurse and a mum who is dying of cancer at the moment so I see all sides of the argument at the moment. My comments: * Private industry takes the **** out of the NHS - mainly through NHS incompetence (though also through immorality and greed in my opinion) * The NHS couldn't negotiate a contract out of a paper bag. Our client helped save 2 of the trusts £2bn through actually WRITING SOME CONTRACTS WITH SUPPLIERS. The IT bit did nothing - basically they had no set prices for anything so the suppliers could charge what they liked month to month * The ringfencing did happen and NHS budgets were frozen at a round £100bn, but supplier inflation in the NHS runs at an average of 5% (see first comment) so it was effectively a 5% reduction in real terms * A great deal of front line staff are superb and really care. Intensive care and A&E are amazing. Cancer care (in Southampton at least) is a ****ing joke - charities are the only thing keeping it going * Too much money goes on "management" staff who aren't really managers - the people who don't even negotiate contracts for instance. It seems to attract a certain kind of person who doesn't live in the real world - who thinks a central planning approach and work next to but ignore a free market economy. In addition, the NHS is a pass master at ****ing money away offshore that'll never come back to the UK (IT, NHS Direct, staff) in tax etc. Another mate who works in care leasing told me a story over a pint of the month after New Labour (they're not Labour) got in and one of his trust clients refreshed the entire management car fleet from Mondeos to BMWs. Good spending chaps, new budget went on the important things eh! * Basic free healthcare is a good thing - it's a must to improve living conditions and create a stable, happy and healthy workforce. The NHS is a good idea. It needs some reorganisation to focus on medicine and care and not ********

blimey, this is how it feels to be lonely....

http://www.sceneric.com/images/01_Last_goal_at_the_Dell.mp3 There you go. It's on my company's main web server though so be nice

I've got the mp3 of the solent commentary if anybody wants it. It occasionally pops up on the radio in the car from the ipod and it always lifts the heart. As I posted on here 3 posts ago, I turned to my sister at half time and said "2-2 on 80 minutes, MLT for the winner?" and had a proper blub when it happened. Life's a bit ****e at the moment and I'm blubbing again . At the end of the game some Oz girl had her photo taken with me and my sister in the East Stand and when I mentioned this on the saintslist at the time her brother (who was a member) said he had a copy of that photo - never got one. If you're on here, I'd love a copy. Miss the Dell as well, loved that old place.

His son is a mate of a mates son - they had a great conversation at school which is how they found out: "Which do you prefer, Top Gear or 5th gear". All the kids answered 5th gear except one and they asked him why "Because Tiff Needell is my dad" :-) Comes across as a superb bloke

On the CL commentary last night, Ray Wilkins said that Ronaldo should be tugged off. What is the world coming to

Air Florida.

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Can somebody start a Branfoot vs Nicholl thread please. Or Hoddle vs Gray - that ought to get a few posters out and about. Maybe Wigley vs Strachan - there's so much to compare there. How about Lowe vs Wilde chairman thread. FFS

I turned to my sister at half time, sitting in the bloody East Stand of all places, and said "2-2 with 5 minutes to go, MLT belter?". I admit I cried when it went in - a special special moment. And CMFG tried to ruin it by nearly scoring another ;-)

Kevin Moore, bless him, is now in a hospice for people with dementia in Curdridge with my wife's Grandad. Poor bloke. Great goal at Wembley in 92

He said he tried it because Phillipe Albert lobbed Schmeichal the week before. If you do find it, I'm the fat bloke behind the goal where it lands who takes slightly longer than everybody else to stand up. I've got tears in my mind remembering watching the ball come toward me and thinking it was going to hit the bar. One of the best days of my life that

I remember this - I think I might still have the podcast! When I lived in London and he started on XFM I couldn't work out why his sense of humour chimed so much with mine, and all the slang (cacker, mush etc.) seemed to be from Southampton until he mentioned doing Project Trident works experience at the Transit factory - and my mate then said "ah yeah, I remember him", so same age as well. As to why they're called skates - it's because they think a skate's mouth looks like a lady bottom

All change: http://www.football-league.co.uk/page/Commercial/Tenders/0,,10794~841346,00.html (though don't hold any breath)

ok, pistons before any smart arse points out "cylinders"

Engine revs is just the speed of the flywheel (and by association the cylinders). However, if you're out of gear the engine has to inject fuel to keep the cylinders moving. If you coast in gear, the momentum of the car will keep pushing it forward, turning the wheels, which will turn the gearbox and therefore engine over. If you leave it in gear and take your foot off the accelerator therefore, a modern engine (one with an electronic box of tricks) will introduce no more fuel into the engine. So leave it in gear

this ref is an away favouring budgie

that move that led to Hammond's shot would have been a great goal. Possession, midfield movement, movement up front. lovely still 0-0 of course...

Could he be Neil Maddison to the Ox's Alan Shearer?

I'm tempted to go but whenever I do we're ****. so...

In the meantime chaps have you tried memcached? Also, I've noticed that the avatar images are served every time somebody hits the page, and served from a php page as well which might be an issue, you might want to utilise browser caching to minimise this - something like: ExpiresActive On ExpiresByType image/gif "access plus 3 hours" ExpiresByType image/jpg "access plus 3 hours" ExpiresByType image/jpeg "access plus 3 hours" ExpiresByType image/png "access plus 3 hours" ExpiresByType application/x-javascript "access plus 8 hours" ExpiresByType application/javascript "access plus 8 hours" ExpiresByType text/javascript "access plus 8 hours" ExpiresByType text/css "access plus 8 hours" in whichever conf file you have might help. I say might as the fact that images are coming from image.php worries me, but as the browser will have cached it I would have thought it would work. It would mean that people changing their avatars might not see it for 8 hours - boo hoo? You *might* want to turn off mod_deflate if your server is CPU bound . Do you have any server monitoring installed like "xymon". That could help identify the issue (CPU / IO etc.) - it's proved invaluable in the past to me. Anyway, just trying to be constructive