DougWeb – Doug's home on the Web

200 million people have downloaded the Firefox web browser (my browser of choice). That’s just astonishing. If you haven’t – try it out!

Well – like this…

WTF is up with that last one?

IMDb have now started inserting headshots next to cast names in their listings, which broke DVDFolks. I released DVDFolks 0.81 yesterday, which restores compatibility with the new-look pages. No other changes were made from 0.8.

I received this email a few moments ago.

Hi,

Came across your site, spent a few minutes looking around and thought
it was pretty cool So, since I liked it so much, was wondering if I
could add you as a ‘friend’ on my site, www.uglyoftheday.com. All I ask
in return is that you link back to my site.

Hopefully we can get some good traffic flowing between our sites!

Let me know what you think…if nothing else, please check out my site,
I think it’s good for a laugh

Paul
www.uglyoftheday.com

Paul – Hi

I note that you sent your email to an address at dougweb.org that I never created.

I also note that your email makes no mention of my name, which tells me that you haven’t spent a great deal of time on my site, because it’s mentioned in large letters on the top-right of every page. In fact I don’t think you visited my site at all, because you also seem to have missed the ‘Contact Me’ link.

But because you are the first spammer that I’ve ever seen write a coherent email, you aren’t trying to sell me anything, you have no friends (see below) and because your site is actually quite funny I’ve decided that I will indeed publicise your site. But don’t expect an actual link that people can click on – that’s reserved for people who don’t spam my inbox. Meh.

Add your parents as named drivers. I read this tip online, and tried it out. Despite ticking the boxes that said ‘they drive other cars regularly’, I still managed to reduce my quote by £95!

Because I’ve had about 2hrs driving experience in the last 4 years, I’m having some ‘refresher’ lessons whilst I wait for my car to be built.

Today I had a lesson booked for 9.45. I woke up to the sound of the doorbell @ 9.44, and was in the instructor’s car @ 9.47. I then drove around Chelmsford’s horrible one-way system complete with myriad roundabouts etc for 2 hours.

2 hours in busy roads, having woken up 3 minutes beforehand. And I didn’t even have a near-miss.

It’s nice to know that I am capable of doing that, although I don’t think I want to do it again…

Turn on your speakers for best results

Watched this a couple of days ago. I actually quite enjoyed it, which was nice since I was expecting to be bored out my mind. The cast used quite a bit of archaic dialogue, so I’m assuming it was a fairly faithful adaptation of the book. That makes the fact I enjoyed it even more surprising.

Just realised I never mentioned where I found the massive discount. It was at drivethedeal.com.

Basically they find you an official dealer with a really low price and simply pass them your details – the actual transaction takes place with the official franchised dealer (would you rather hand over several grand to a well-established dealer, or a website you’ve never heard of before?). They make their money from dealer’s commission for the sale, the dealer makes a sale he wouldn’t have before, and the customer gets a bargain price car (with delivery included). Everyone goes away happy. Yay!

This is different to most internet brokers, who buy the cars themselves using fleet discounts, and then pass them on ‘untouched’ to you. Because of fleet discount restrictions, that means that the cars must legally remain ‘theirs’ for 3-6 months, which means that most insurance companies won’t touch you if that’s to be your primary car.

When specifying my car, I picked ‘Jeans Blue’ for the paint colour. It’s a kind of dark blue, and looked a lot better than red, black, white, dark grey, or green (both my parents cars are silver, so I’ve ruled that out). I got a phone call today from the dealer, which had some bad news – my car won’t be built until after the ’summer shutdown’ (I believe it’s where the factory doesn’t make any cars for a few weeks, so workers can go on holiday and the factory can be upgraded for new models). After the shutdown, Ford aren’t selling Focuses (Foci?) in that colour anymore – it’s been replaced with ‘Ocean Blue’. Although I think that ‘Ocean Blue’ still looks better than the other colours on offer it’s not as nice as ‘Jeans Blue’.

The picture below shows the difference – the car is in my preferred shade of blue, and the inset picture (which was the best the dealer had) shows Ford’s replacement. Bah.

Oh, and ‘a few weeks’ actually turns out to be mid-September

I just bought my first car. Well, it’s not bought yet because it’ll take several weeks to arrive, but that’s not the point.

It’s my 1st car (even though I’ve had my license for over 4 years).

It’s a brand spanking new Ford Focus Titanium (1.6 Diesel).

Combined with the options I want Ford’s MSRP is £19,420.00. I’m paying £14,714.53 for the car (the rest is 1st years insurance for someone without a no-claims bonus built up). That’s a 24% discount, which means I’m a very happy person. I’m also a very scared person, because the most I’ve ever spent on anything before was about £900.

Note to Allen Ford (Brentwood). One of your salesmen offered me £1,000 off a car (Focus Zetec Climate) last month and then insisted that

I can’t give you a bigger discount – there’s no more money in the car

when it was pointed out that discounts of £3,500+ are available from just about every car supermarket out there. Since one of Ford’s standard offers last month was £1,000 off a Zetec Climate he was either very stupid, or has a policy of treating your customers as stupid. For the record my purchase (complete with £4705.47 discount) is from an official Ford dealer.

62 mins: RED CARD Frustration gets the better of Wayne Rooney and he is sent off. He wrestles for the ball with Ricardo Carvalho on the halfway line and stamps on the defender’s testicles.

(emphasis mine, summary taken from BBC Sport)

Not only that, but right in front of the referee. What the hell was the idiot thinking?