Schadenfreude

The BBC News site has the little Scotland section. Rarely does Hawick feature on it, but today, 90 job losses have been announced. Amongst them is VW dealer Thornwoods going into liquidation, resulting in 16 redundancies.

Thornwoods were the ones that refused to fix my under-warranty Beetle; sold me an air-cooled Beetle that nearly killed me, and tried to convince me that paying £400/month for a £200/month vehicle was somehow sensible. Archie, the salesman I dealt with there (and at other garages), was not too bad - but the rest of them were utterly appalling. They're also the same firm that refused to hire me as a car salesman (something I'm actually quite good at) because my "accent was wrong and I didn't fit in since I wasn't local".

So, whilst redundancy isn't nice, etc. - it seriously could not have happened to a more deserving bunch of apathetic, ineffectual and downright rude people.

Now, if Border Toyota in St. Boswells gets into trouble, I will feel genuinely sorry for them.

Time

mr_pete told me that Laserdiscs are finally dead. Well, to me they were dead in 2000, when the last commercial release (Sleepy Hollow, IIRC) was pressed for the US/International market; I wasn't aware that the hardware was still available and in some ways regret not hunting down a new DVL-919E at some point; my CLD-D925 has transport issues.

Anyway.

Funny thing, that.

I was just digging through my box of bits and found my FlipStart - the amazing pocket computer launched in April 2007 by Vulcan.

It already feels like ancient history. Devices like the Eee rendered it obsolete astoundingly effectively, though none of them have matched the dimensions or real performance as such.

And yet Laserdisc hardware was still in production.

There's always something new, always something to be done, that means that the passing of time is something I become aware of AFTER the fact, I don't look ahead and see it all stretching out. I'm beginning to think that reducing some of the "distractions" might be quite healthy for my head.

Epic!

So, here is something terrifying, below this cut.

The list of model cars I am seeking for the collection I actually want. I'm still torn on the 1:18 vs. 1:43 aspect, as some models I know exist in 1:18 in particularly detailed and nice form (like the RX8, which I never did find in RHD Grey).

This is the total list, and if I'm aware of a model that goes with it, I've mentioned it. Cars in bold are ones that I really liked a lot and would like larger scale models of and accurate trim detail on.

( You must be mad )