Katy Nicholson

We went WP8 at work, hoping as everyone had a M365 account it’d be seamless and easy. But nope half the stuff needed a consumer MS account only. Loved the device and OS but let down by lack of joined up thinking and lack of apps.

Our cards are the official Paxton ones so the numbers are encrypted, there’s no relation between the ID shown in net2 and the ID read by the SCR or any other reader with the official Paxton cards.

Maybe it's just me being old and grumpy but I really hope this awful gen AI stuff goes the same way as NFTs and in a few years nobody is using it any more.

The third row only has 4 seats, what a mess.

I feel embarrassed every time I watch any sort of House of Commons footage at just the shouting, jeering, braying childishness on show. Politics just seems to generally attract the wrong people.

Is this JW? My dad and step-mum are JW, never actually asked them what they believe, they married when I was 18 so I avoided indoctrination. Wow.

Why does anybody go to Sainsbury’s?? Lift broken for weeks, car park doors - one barely opens, the other broke for almost a year. What looks like cat litter on vomit, left there for weeks. And today, trolley wheel locks up every 10m. Need to find another place to get my CO2 cylinders in person.

Really recommend the House & Garden tour at Alton Towers. A 2 hour guided tour and a bargain at £10.

Day 4! Erlebnispark Tripsdrill, we had a really good day here. I quite liked Karacho - a cool Infinity coaster. The highlight was the Vekoma STC, Hals-über-Kopf. While not quite as good as Fianna Force, still a very good coaster. Plus they had cute goats nearby!

Day 3, we visited Holiday Park (rebranding to Plopsaland Deutschland) where the brilliant Expedition Ge Force was the highlight of the day. Plenty of re-rides and this quickly made its way into my top 10.
This is definitely somewhere I want to return to once they've opened the two new coasters.

Wouldn't be surprised if Speed was moved here, there's space for it. Anaconda was closed due to getting "new trains" (Megafobia's maybe?)
Still had a good day though.

The obvious highlight is Monster, basically a clone of Raptor (Cedar Point) except they didn't fit the brakes on the mid course, so it only runs 2 trains.
The rapids was hilarious, 3 rafts of varying capacities as they were obviously salvaged from multiple other parks.

Next on the trip was Walygator. This was supposed to be the "easy day" after Europa Park but they changed their opening days meaning it had to be done first.
Felt a bit like "Oakwood in France" although there were better flat rides (S&S space shot vs that Bounce monstrosity). The woodie was closed.

Charnock Richard services have a "trans toilet", I decided to try it to see what the deal was. It was locked, and you had to go get the key from the shop.
Yes, you need to go and *ask permission to pee* at the shop. Ridiculous.
(I did not go and ask permission, so no idea what it was like inside)

Now we need Google to stop pushing Chrome if you go near any of their websites in not-Chrome, and the world will be happy.

I go with a back pack (the exact one in the photo)... bit big but survives Parc Astérix (I actually like their crazy system as it helps them empty, load and send a Toutatis train in 26 seconds), and I need the space for medication (epi-pens etc) and plenty of room for gloves/scarf in winter!

The Big One opened 31 years ago. I can remember having to wait 16 months after it opened to be tall enough.

Is that “minus 10” for the absolutely bonkers coaster portion? Hahaha. It’s so wild though, I love it. A challenge to not hold on.

rcdb.com/16110.htm

I forgot to post on here during my last trip, so will try to do one park a day.

First off was an afternoon at Bobbejaanland, to break up the drive to Frankfurt. Highlight here - Fury, great launched Infinity coaster.

Goudurix... I really like the layout of this coaster but I think the new trains have made it a little worse if anything. The old trains had the padding to hold your head in place.

Hopefully this will get re-tracked at some point as it'd be a shame to lose it.

Blackpool promenade (an A road) was tried, and has since gone back to a clear distinction between road and footpath

I took it shortly after 2008 came out so while people were still building new 2003(R2) stuff, basically nobody was upgrading from NT4 any more. I gave up and settled with an MCSA.

2003 AD Design exam (can’t remember the code), it felt 90% about upgrading netbios NT4 and 10% what was actually taught on the corresponding official course. Gave up after 2 goes.

Lovely weather, perfect for a go on the rapids. But it’s not open today 😟

It's the Microsoft MVP Summit this week. Although I'm no longer an active MVP, here's a throwback when I found my name on the wall back in 2023, it was split over two lines hence the attempt to point at the far edges!

So apparently Vekoma did some work on Infusion over winter. Had my annual ride yesterday, whatever they did made no improvement to the head bashing.

So long Oakwood, sad to see Megafobia go (especially with how well it was riding after the recent refurb) but it was a long drive and not much else of note there. Speed was alright but rode awfully last time I visited (2023).

Yay 🥰🎢