Sadly the time has come to part ways with my beloved sports car. I’ve reached that stage of life whereby I have to appear all grown up and sensible. My 2-seater, 150bhp, 2.0l straight 6, limited edition, BMW Z3 just doesn’t fit that description, no matter how much I would like it to. We’ve had our fun together and now it’s officially on the market at a complete bargain price for any enthusiasts out there who would like to get their hands on a future classic. Goodbye old girl – I’ll miss you terribly when you’re gone.

Last Summer I treated myself to a new Dell laptop (Inspiron 1525). Fully loaded with a 1.66GHz Core 2 Duo and 3GB of RAM – a reasonable beast by any grade. I’m not a gamer so I didn’t beef up the graphics but it came with a decent enough setup so I was pretty sure that Eclipse, Word, Excel and my usual apps wouldn’t cause too much hassle. Up until about 2 weeks ago the machine was running fine and without any real incident. However, it then started to slow down to no end. Apps took noticeably longer to load (no, not the it’s an old PC now mindset problem ) and typing was nearly impossible. Huge delays between hitting a key and the character appearing on the screen, sometimes problems with scrolling too. I had no idea as to what was wrong – completely stumped. I rarely doubt hardware in such situations and it turns out that I was right to do so. Following a bit of laboured internet searching and such I discovered that disabling Aero would yield significant benefits in Windows Vista. Crikey! What a difference it did make!! My laptop is like new, if not faster!

Now this was a pre-installed Vista laptop purchased from Dell with 3GB of RAM, well capable of running Vista and it did when I first booted it up. However, something happened in the last 2 weeks, possibly an update by Microsoft that made Aero swamp my system to a state whereby I could no longer type. I would like to note that disabling Aero and going for Vista Basic appearance was the only change I made – pretty conclusive in my book. CPU idling performance has dropped from 10%+ to between 1% and 3% max. Now that’s more like it. Why do these things happen? Although I guess that the real question is how are these things allowed to happen?

…since I had a good rant about insurance companies. Well, it’s a new year and there are two advertisements that are really getting on my nerves at the moment. The first is a radio advert by AXA who claim to be your “local” insurance company. Drop in and get your amazingly cheap policy with no fuss. Well AXA are far from your “local” insurance company so don’t let that fool you into supporting your own. In fact unless you live in Dublin or Derry you won’t be talking to somebody in the same county as you when you call them. On top of that, the great savings on offer, well I still haven’t forgotten that when I started driving and acquired my first policy through a broker who got me a policy with AXA without my immediate knowledge, they charged me over IR £3,500 to drive a standard, small-engined, of-the-shelf, family car. The next year their call centre told me that they had a blanket ban on my model of car even though I was still insured with them at the time I called for new quotes. I vowed then that I would never do business with AXA again and I never have. FBD is an example of a local company – you can actually drop into one of their offices in your county and say hello to them.

The second advert that really gets me at the moment is the Hibernian TV advert. You know the one that uses the footage of Charlie Haughy telling us to tighten our belts. I guess they didn’t think of this when they used that footage and that somehow highlighting the badness of the past would make us think that here’s a company that cuts to the chase and has no time for those who hoodwink and obstruct? Well just over 5 years ago Hibernian was the first motor insurance company to turn around and tell Irish drivers that the Irish driving test was worthless. Of course they didn’t say that exactly but in a roundabout way they did; they introduced the “ignition” driving test that placed a further obstacle in the path of young drivers with full licenses towards getting cheaper insurance and that somehow a half-day course would eliminate loads of the risk that their hefty statistics claim to otherwise represent. The biggest insult of all was that it completely undermined the official, government backed, Irish driving test by refusing to accept that drivers were qualified. The other thing that relates to that footage of CJ and the motor insurer is that for the last couple of years, while we have all been tightening our belts and getting ready for recession, companies like Hibernian were enjoying record profits in the Irish motor insurance arena. In 2007 the Irish motor insurance industry enjoyed profits of over Eur 357, 000, 000 but of course we’re the ones tightening our belts just like when CJ was buying his fancy shirts – the failure to spot the obvious similarity is frankly baffling and I for one would never hire the genius who came up with that idea for an ad.

Sigh… Rant over.

60 years ago (1948 to be exact) a large body of people of the Jewish faith decided to claim their own patch of land and subsequently invaded the lands of others to enlarge their patch. When others fought back the Israeli’s sought the support of another super power (the good old Jew S of A) and set upon a 50 year campaign of killing and land grabbing against those whom they could get away with calling names such as terrorists even if they weren’t. Sounds awful familiar to me, didn’t something similar happen in the 40′s before Israel? Can’t quite remember what… Somebody please tell little America to pull their heads in before more life is needlessly lost.

A bit late I guess but hopefully you all had a good celebration of the annual cusp that is New Year’s. Started the year with a brisk walk/climb through the Comeragh Mountains in Co. Waterford on New Year’s Day – start as I aim to finish and all that.

This year presents many challenges for me. I’m taking a bit of time to myself to concentrate on issues that I have been trying to deal with for a while now and hopefully will come out the other side of the year better for it. One thing that I have been living with for over 4 years now is a crippling fear of flying that has prevented me taking a flight during that period. Not too much fun when the better half really enjoys the whole travel experience – I’ve become somewhat of a stumbling block; a personification that has no place, not even in the deep ramblings of trans-discipline metaphysical poetry.

I have tried plenty of things to convince myself that flying is good, etc, etc but thus far I have not been able to win over the fear. Unlike many people who suffer with a fear of flying, my problem (although I initially thought so) is not linked to either cluastrophobia nor a fear of death. Ever since I was a young kid, I have had a problem with an acute sense of motion. Rollercoasters, spinning fairground rides, and even playground swings were not the attraction that they should have been but moreso a terrifying prospect. This turned out to be something that I couldn’t avoid either in my adult life. Moving at speed as a passenger in a car (like the Mondello Race track experience that shock my nerves), going downhill in a car even at relatively low speeds if there was a sudden drop and of course the constant motion of non-contact flying were drops and rises are a constant play. To this day I’m pretty sure there are people who wonder why I always insist upon driving myself rather than taking a lift – mystery solved guys!

My good wife purchased me Allen Carr’s “Easy Way to Enjoy Flying” for Christmas in the hope that the powerful words of this master author would help me on my crusade against fear. As I read through the book, I note that it is incredibly clever and definitely a worthwhile investment for anyone with “the fear” or “FOF” as Allen refers to it as. However, my optimism is somewhat quashed too as I think that the book is mainly focussed on removing the unwarranted fear of death rather than anything that will really help me.

From all the reading that I have done, it may turn out that my choice of a rabbit as a pet may have been subconsciously influenced by having something in common with the creature. Rabbits freeze in the headlamps of cars, not because they are blinded but the fear causes their bodies to produce an excess of the chemical serotonin which puts the body into an almost paralytic state coupled with a heightened state of anxiety. The same chemical is produced by humans particularly those who do not enjoy rollercoaster rides. The opposite chemical, dopamine, is also produced by humans and probably exists in vast quantities in the boy racer community – I never thought that I would envy them, alas I tip my hat, you princes of brain[control]. Self-diagnosis is always the worst kind but try going to a doctor with the complaint that you have a crippling fear of … 10 minutes later you’ll be out the door with a prescription for Valium or Xanax. That to me is not an answer, I don’t even take paracetamol without protest never mind dope myself up just for a flight.

I wish there was a solution that would not only open the locked doors of airports in my mind but that would also set me free to enjoy many of the other things in life that I admire on paper but cannot do in practice. Answers on a postcard please…