ultra-mini-moan: on the trail!

This!
Need I say more?

Just imagine the horrific accident that could have been caused if a blind driver had pulled around the corner into the car park, there is no way their guide dog would have been able to see this obstruction from the passenger seat! Quite literally a Trail(er) of Obstruction!

daily life: what's that sticking up in the covers?

This is more of a re-rant.
We live in the Information Age, or so I am told, the world is full of information, information at the touch of a button, information spitting it's juicy goodness right into your face, and you like it, you want the information in your face.
So why is the information I want impossible to find?
I want to telephone a company to inform them they've been incompetent - Can I find their phone number on the website? My arse I can. Even if the website has a 'Contact Us' button at the top of the page it certainly doesn't take you to a page with contact details, likely a page telling you the company has helpful customer service advisers working 24 hours a day to solve your issues. Well they are wasting their money paying a team of 'friendly and helpful' customer care staff to work 24 hours a day, I doubt anybody has successfully located the phone number yet.
If the page contains more than the tagline for their next TV advert it probably has a selection of 'Frequently Asked Questions' that will solve your need to speak to a human, though it's more like a scavenger hunt, and you have to find the clues and answer the questions in order to proceed to the finish line.
So finally after wading through the 'Forest of FAQ' you might stumble across a link to a 'Live Chat' thingy, well it's not quite a phone number but at least I can have a 'Two-Way Dialogue' with a real person (or a super advanced AI that would give Vest-Man a run for his money), though your hopes of resolving your problem as dashed by the heart shattering message 'Unfortunately our Live Chat service is not available at the moment, but you can speak to one of our customer support team on the telephone'. ARGH!!!!, and they don't even list the telephone number.

Are you getting Deja-vu yet?

Or recently I needed to give several organisations the address of the new Laboratoire, that was certainly not easy, especially HMRC who required me to know some special number to prove I am who I claim I am, only I don't know that special number, some other person knows that special number so I have to ask them what the special number is. So to prove I am who I claim to be I need to provide them with a number that only another person knows! In what world does that ever makes sense?

Can somebody also please tell me what the light on my Vax means - There is this red light that goes on and off, sometimes off completely, other times flickering, others flashing at regular intervals. I would guess it's telling me how much I suck at any given moment, but the instruction manual doesn't even mention the existence of a light, and most definitely does not explain it's various phases. I can only assume the light and the corresponding instruction manual were produced by a team of women (we have many female teams working tirelessly at the Laboratoire, getting to grips with some very long and hard problems), that would certainly explain why I have absolutely no idea what is wrong, and why when I ask the response is "If you don't know I'm not going to tell you!"

Oh, and there is a whirry thing that I haven't got a clue as to its purpose is!

food: mmmm dunno

So this post was triggered after consuming a Danone Danio yoghurt, well I'll have to take their word for it that the product was yoghurt as it had a bizarre spongy texture and quite literally absolutely no taste.
Danone claim that the milk is passed through a special fat extraction thingamajig which leaves the yoghurt extra thick and with 0% fat.
This yoghurt was completely vile, and I'd sooner lick the white fluid from the inside of George Michaels underpants than the white crud in a Danio pot, but it's 0% fat so that apparently makes it acceptable to sell tasteless goo for lots of money.
But ultimately what is the point of all these fat free, reduced fat, completely disgusting things? If the thing you are eating is unpleasant then just don't eat it, because there's no fat freeer, calorie lower item than nothing.

Plus I've never understood people that don't eat butter and cream. In particular people don't put butter on their bread because it contains salt and fat, instead they spread vegetable fat based stuff full of chemically and mechanically altered I don't know what. How can you ever argue that an almost natural product rich in vitamins and protein is worse for you than whatever Utterly Butterly is? I Can't Believe It's Not Butter! I Can't Believe People Eat That And I Definitely Can't Believe It's Food!
And if the bit of fat and salt in butter is a problem for those people's health then how much butter are they spreading on their bread?

Here's a crazy new idea, if you want to lose weight and stay healthy eat a sensible amount of tasty food and not a massive amount of 'Low Fat' crap. You might just enjoy eating your dinner for once.