Not before time.

Some might say it's 6 years late, some 1 year and others one month. Regardless, after another summer has dissapeared in the garage, here it is in all it's "finished apart from a few bits of trim" glory.



It's got a total of 310 miles on the clock since it hit the road for the first time last year. 140 of those were during last years trips for technical control and 170 of them since it was truly back on the road complete with it's brand shiney new norwegian registration plates last Sunday.

During the last 170 miles nothing major has fallen off, it developed a very noise U/J which I have changed and otherwise everything is working well. It also appears to have developed a bit of a gear oil leak from the front seal on the gearbox. Not so healthy, we'll have to keep an eye on that.



So, wether she likes it or not, we're heading off soon for 2 weeks around Europe in the old girl.

The planned route is approximaetly 2600Km, Home-Sande (In laws chalet to "demostrate to MIL that car is finished to a satisfactory state")-Oslo-Kiel-Rotterdam-North France-Ingelheim am Rhine-Nurnburg (and a circuit of the Nurnbergring)-North Germany-Copenhagen-Kiel-Oslo-Home.

The actual route may well be Home-Oslo-Kiel-Kiel-Kiel-Kiel-Kiel-Copenhagen (by public transport)-Kiel-Oslo-Home.

Time will tell, well be taking a few litres of EP90 with us...

You can see more pictures of the build here on more power, the website. If you click on the photos you get a slide show and can see the short comments I have written.

Where I've been

I've many exciting things to post, but same excuse as last year for being a little too busy.

Keep up with the progress on my Spitfire photos atmore power, the website

P.S. Happy Birthday to the other cold on and Big (little) Sis

Microsofts Latest Rubbish

'Office 2007, avoid it like the plague'

For reasons of political correctness I try not to publish my strong opinions of worldly matters on the blog. However, Bill Gates latest release has wound me up so much I can't help myself.

The world has come to expect that any new MS product will be slower and less stable to begin with, but in time faster computers and improved functionality will make it all worth while. After works recent 'upgrade' to 2007 I am afraid that Word, Excel, Outlook etc will never be the same again.

That it is significantly slower and less stable than the norm for Microsoft upgrades is not my major bugbear. The complete abscence of menus and the introduction tabs and icons in their place is.

I don't believe that most 'advanced' users need some stupid icon which tries to explain the functionality of 'Macros' or 'Text to columns'. I wasted my first day working with Excel
2007 with a splitting headache from trying to find functions that used to be a couple of clicks away as they always have been.

Halfway through my second day of frustration, I got so annoyed that, for my sanity and my laptops safety, the IT manager at work kindly lent me the office 2003 discs so that I could take the significant leap forwards from 2007 back to 2003.

From my first day sitting infront of Windows 3.1 Office products have had 'File', 'Edit', 'View' and so on familiarly appearing at the top of the screen. Why after nearly 2 decades should this need to change. I have read that it will take an 'advanced user' between 6 months and 1 year to re-learn MS Office. I believe this to be true.

So, when offered an upgrade, refuse point blank and hope that Microsoft have got over this nonsense by the next upgrade.

Microsoft, this time you really have got it worng.