oldbloke's mutterings

We thought about it and decided that as, in a month, we'd watched just one movie and taped two others, and never got around to the music channels, don't care about the news channels, the only sport we /really/ care about is F1 and that's on ITV, and Jack's still a bit young for any of the kid's stuff except CBeebies (and the others have adverts), if we went for anything at all it would be Variety+Knowledge. We've watched a few things in the Variety mix and one or two from Knowledge.
We um'd and ah'd for a good 5 minutes, and then decided 90quid for a year was bearable, even though it goes to Murdoch.
So I rang them today and they claim to be having trouble downloading updates to existing viewing cards and will have to post us another. Hmmm. It'd better have everything FreeSat had, that's all.

A rare event:
On the way in this morning, after getting into 5th as we came away from Rochdale on the A627M, didn't have to change down until I was past Oldham. Yes, not even as I went through the roundabout at the junction with the M62. Still takes about an hour and ten from home to Jack's nursery, though, even when we don't have to stop for him to do a wee (which we haven't for a few days now, huzzah, in the mornings at least - we still generally have to stop at least once on the way home, but no actual accidents for ages now)

A fun gig:
Spotted that Artsworld had "Roy Orbison and Friends" last night. Only got to it about halfway through, but a nice gig all the same. In the band, along with what I assume was Roy's normal backing lineup, were Elvis Costello, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Waits, KDLang, Bonnie Raitt, and a few other people I probably ought to have recognised - Google tells me there were Jackson Browne, Jennifer Warnes, T Bone Burnett, James Burton, and more.


A dilemma:
This follows on from the above. Our free-all-of-Sky-for-a-month deal is over on Friday. The Hey-why-not-sign-up letter came last night. I'm actually tempted, despite the money going to Murdoch. But you know, we didn't watch all that much that wasn't on FreeSat anyway in that month, and which mixes would I need for the stuff we did like? It's cheap(ish) for the first year, but after that??? And is there some small print that says you have to stay past that first year, hidden away somewhere?

1. Somebody sent me a 1/2 page of A4 'survey', apparently with no cost or obligation they'll send me some (not very good) binoculars and samples of 6 wines. Hey, why not.

2. Sky, in a desperate bid to move us from FreeSat to a subscription, are giving us the Sky World package free for February. Excellent. BTW - Can anybody comment on Sky broadband? Is 40G/month enough? We don't download much at all, but how much bandwidth does Skype burn?

Fantastic skies over Oldham as we drove in this morning. The landscape was muted into greyness by the early hour, but lights were twinkling all over the town, and there were the most gorgeous pinks against a pale blue sky.
I ought to set out a half hour early one day (yeh, right) so I can stop with my camera.