How is it that every time I shop at Sainsbury’s there seems to be a problem with one of the customers queuing in front of me?

In the past I have had teenagers arguing with store managers about buying crates of Stella, customers who’s credit cards have expired and get into discussions on how to pay, dozens of apples dropped all over floor by customers not using bags… the list goes on.

Today I had a pair of French students in the queue trying to buy DVDRs. Nothing wrong with this I know – unless they’re going to put copies of Norton Antivirus on the discs and use the software to infect peoples PCs. What the students did though was tear open a 10 pack of DVDRs and removed 2 which they then tried to purchase!

What’s their problem? Sainsbury’s isn’t a free for all jumble sale where you can pick and choose what you want to purchase. If it were I would go and buy multipacks of Hula Hoops and just pay for those lovely brown, beef flavour packets (surely everybody’s favourite).

Mr. Goater, (Daninthemix tells me you’re still a regular reader here), do you still work in Sainsbury’s? Are these weirdo customers normal? Of course, for the sake of your job, your answer will remain private between you, myself and the Google Mail administrators.

I watched the England game this evening, good performance from the lads, well in the second half anyway. Something still puzzles me about the England team though. How does Owen Hargreaves get picked? He is a pointless entity. He must have some dirt on Sven, it is the only explanation.

The man’s not even fully English. He’s a bit Canadian, partly Welsh, has a bit of German thrown in and probably only qualifies for England because his grandma’s second cousin twice removed married an English man.

Here is a list of pointless things that Owen Hargreaves is more useless than…

1) A condom machine in a Vatican
2) A careers advisor in a hospice
3) A one legged man in an arse kicking competition
4) A chocolate teapot
5) An ejector seat on a helicopter
6) A glass cricket bat
7) An anorexic in a doughnut eating contest
8) A see through mirror
9) An ashtray on a motorbike
10) George Bush on Mastermind

The faulty PC story continues. I think the only way to get rid of Norton is to do a complete reinstall of Windows, a little drastic I know but it’s the only solution.

I tried doing a reinstall this evening, after wasting hours of my Bank Holiday Monday afternoon. I installed the floppy disk drive, cutting my thumb on some sharp metal in the process (there is now blood on the PC case), downloaded the SATA drivers required to run before installing Windows, tried to copy the drivers onto a floppy disk only to find out the FDD was dead.

At that point I was on the verge of throwing the PC out the window. It was time to call it a day; I have not admitted defeat though. Instead of spending hours and hours of my evenings after work this week on it, I have decided to pay a friend who builds/repairs PCs for a living to do it for me. This way I can piss about with PCs at work, while he pisses about fixing mine in his line of work. Everybody’s happy.

Now back onto the evil anti-virus software…

The best way to describe Norton Antivirus is like somebody at a house party who refuses to leave when it’s all over. What’s more, when asked to go, does a big turd on the rug, vomits on your sofa and rapes your dog.

In my job I am often asked what the best line of defence against computer viruses is. When my first answer of “Keep the computer turned off” is not appreciated I then suggest Norton. Not anymore. It’s McAfee all the way now. So Dr. Norton or whatever you’re called, go fuck yourself. I hope Microsoft’s up and coming antivirus software kills you off.

Three things you should never work with. Children, animals and computers, I work with the latter and although today’s problem isn’t anything to do with my job it is still very annoying.

My Norton antivirus definitions are due to run out next week, therefore exposing my computer to all kinds of nasty stuff – viruses, trojans, worms and Al Qaeda terrorists (probably).

I uninstalled Norton Antivirus 2003 (don’t even ask WHY I am still using it) and now every time I right click over a file I get a damn error message involving an Explorer.exe Application Error.

I’ve done everything Symantec have suggested on there website – removal tools, clearing registry and does it work? Does it bollocks!

Luckily I have created Ghost backups (do a Google search if you don’t know what these are). The annoying thing is all these backups contain Norton! Aaaarrrrgggghhhh!

You’ve made a powerful enemy today my friend!

At this stage I have uninstalled Norton, reinstalled Norton, bitch slapped Norton and somehow been given another 12 months of virus definitions free of charge. I don’t know if I should be grateful for this or take it as a nasty joke from Mr. Norton who is laughing at me from his ivory tower.

I’m not wasting anymore time with it today. You may have won this round Norton, but I’ll be back.

Like many people on Bank Holiday weekends I went to a Garden Centre this afternoon. Not to buy spades, plants and horse shit to spray on the garden, I bought a fish tank for my bedroom.

I have been thinking of getting an aquarium for some time, I find watching fish swimming around meaninglessly in a tank relaxing. It’s also a little bit like watching Big Brother, only with more intelligent life forms.

I bought one of these starter packs which comes with a light, pump and everything else you need to keep your fish healthy. I also bought some fishy toys – fake coral, plastic weeds and all the usual stuff. It’s like buying for a new born baby.

The woman who served me was very helpful and was issuing me with all instructions on the DOs and DON’Ts on fish keeping.

DO feed your fish
DO replace the dirty water every week
DON’T pour Carling into the tank
DON’T take your fish our of the water

It’s a lot to remember, I was also told that if the fish is lying flat on the surface of the water it does not want you to rub its belly like a dog, it is probably dead and will need to be flushed.

As I currently have no fish in the tank I drew one in. It looks like an ol TV set.

I actually haven’t got any fish in the tank yet. I was told to wait two weeks for the chlorine to be taken out of the tap water and for the friendly bacteria to build up. I wonder if this “friendly bacteria” is anything like the stuff health experts keep saying we should all be getting more of. I could tip a bottle of that Actimel Yoghurt Drink into the water send see if that helps… maybe not.

While I was in the fish shop I overheard a conversation between a customer and shop assistant. The customer was explaining how he was moving house on Monday, had a massive tank with expensive fish at home. The tank was too heavy to move filled with water and what should he do?

To the customers dismay the shop assistant explained that if these fish were placed straight into tap water they would be killed. Due to the size of the aquarium it was recommended that the tank be left for TWO MONTHS before placing fishes inside. Ouch!

Just get a dog, cat or even adopt a child. Easier to look after than damn fish.

More on this in two weeks time when I go and choose which fish shall enter my aquarium, or as some may call it Tank of Death.

Hazzah! I won the lottery last night. After over two years of playing and winning absolutely fuck all, I am now finally with the elite.

I’m going to be keeping my feet firmly on the ground. I think I will stay in my job and best of all folks, I will be keeping Sparkster.net up and running – you can untie the rope from the loft hatch now, life is still worth living.

I haven’t made any plans on what to do the money yet. Part of me wants to spend it on things for my own enjoyment. Part of me wants to invest it. Mind you, there’s only so much interest that can be made from a tenner!

I was persuaded by one of my MSN Buddies to enter the Channel 4 Fantasy Football thingy for The World Cup.

Basically, you choose a team of 11 players from a list of every squad competing in The World Cup. You are then awarded points based upon games won, goals scored and goal assists made by your players in real life games. Points are also taken away for games lost and goals conceded (I think).

You can pick whatever players you want, from whatever teams. The only rule is that you may only select 2 players from any one team (e.g. you may only choose 2 Brazilians, 2 Englishmen or 2 Trinidad & Tobago superstars). You then enter a league with every other participant and win prizes based upon how well you do.

You can make substitutions in between matches. So if Ronaldinho trips over his teeth and breaks his leg the night before playing England you are allowed to take him out of your own personal team. Also if David James gets chosen to go in goal you would be wise to remove every England player from your team – remember you get points taken away if your players’ team loses.

Here’s my team…

Sometimes I wish I could go into the Big Brother house. Not as a contestant, I respect myself too much for that, besides which I don’t think I could mentally take the madness.

No, I would like to go in and introduce some sense into the house. For the last few days we have had morons moaning about bottled water, missing suitcases, makeup remover and how the rules are unfair. They mope around the house crying and threatening to walk if their demands are not met.

If I was in the house and some wet blanket started crying to me about wanting to leave, instead of giving sympathy like the other housemates have done, I would pack their bags, open the door and kick them up the stairs.

I can’t be doing with these whinge bags who just moan and moan about fuck all, especially when there are so many real problems in the world. You don’t like tap water Nikki? Go and drink what they have to put up with in Ethiopian. Bitch.

Then we had Dawn, cheating cow communicating with the outside world. When being told by BB what she had done wrong, instead of sitting down and listening like a good little girl, she hid from the camera and spouted “shut up” repeatedly. No Dawn, you shut up you fat slag! You broke the rules, the whole world isn’t out to get you and “bring you down”, accept it, now leave through the backdoor and never appear on television again.

That Richard is coming across as one of the most despicable humans beings you could possible meet. His treatment of Shabaz was horrible, his sly comments are malicious. The man behaves like a bitching school girl and dresses like somebody from The Village People. Really hope he gets a round of boos when he gets evicted. A round of boos and then falls down the stairs.

All these housemates are worrying how the evil media will portray them. I know the papers can be cruel but anything nasty written about this current lot is fully deserved. They’re all a bunch of annoying twats. Annoying twats I will continue to watch every night at 9 on Channel 4.

This evening I watched the final episodes of Lost Season 2 (warning: spoilers below). It now seems that the series is following the typical tradition used in the X-Files mythology of “asking more questions than giving answers” in key episodes.

Locke has got over his Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and stopped pressing that damn button. In doing so the whole world appeared to end but then turned out OK thanks to some Scottish guy who put a key in a mystery box.

Jack & co. got kidnapped by the evil Others who may now not be as evil as first thought. Michael got reunited with his freak kid Walt who he has been chasing all season, we don’t know why he was taken in he first place (Michael Jackson isn’t on the island). Some new guys in another hatch in the North/South Pole are in trouble and the ugly smack-head Charlie has managed to cop off with the hot Aussie bird. All very unrealistic, especially that last bit involving Charlie and the honey from down under.

I would not be at all surprised if the Lost’s creators have no clue in how the show will pan out. Like X-Files I am sure it’ll drag on for many seasons and then EVERYTHING will be explained in a double length finale. We’ll know everything but still be left feeling a little cheated and confused.

Anyway, roll on Season 3 and if you’re one of these people watching on Channel 4 and has just started Season 2, sorry mate, I did give you a spoiler warning, not a lot happens anyway.

Oh Lord why do you mock me? I got back from work this afternoon to find this on the doorstep…

It’s a match programme from the Play Off Final on Sunday (the one I don’t like to talk about). Last week I was advised to buy one off the internet in case they sold out. They didn’t sell out and as I also bought one on the day I now have TWO mementos of that terrible game.

To rub salt into the wounds after P&P this programme cost me £8. Any Watford fan who wants it, send me an e-mail along with an offer and it’s yours – let the bidding start at £50.00.

The programme does not include any ticket stubs, Golden Kit Kat Passes into the Big Brother House or player signatures. I can however provide a personal summary of the game free of charge. This will involve me crapping into a jiffy bag and sending it onto you (NOTE: this will incur an additional P&P charge).