Senor Farrow Visits El Faro, London

Well things finally came to an end for myself on the BPOSS (BP Open Shipping System) team.  So the team decided that we would combine the Christmas team lunch with my leaving dooooo.

John Sparke thought we should go to a Spanish restaurant that he knew…

Farrow at El Faro


Enjoying A Fillet Steak

Originally uploaded by paulfarrow

El Faro
3 Turberry Quay
Pepper Street
London E14 9RD

http://www.el-faro.co.uk/

It is right next to Crossharbour station on the Isle of Dogs.

The staff were welcoming and Spanish which is great as most of the waiting staff these days in Spanish restaurants are english.

I would say the menu was small but precise with some really good stuff on it.

I had the Spanish omelette to start with, followed by a perfectly cooked blue rump steak.  The wine menu was excellent and I and a colleague had a red rioja which was just fantastic.

For dessert I had the caramelized bananas served with Madagascar vanilla ice cream.

My colleagues meals were also excellent.

The bill was 433 pounds which worked out at 86 pounds a head so it wasn’t the cheapest lunch although I think the three bottles of champagne and the brandy’s after the meal somewhat pushed the price up.

Would I go back – YES I would.

The Mini Cooper S Has Been Sold

Well the final finance payment date was rapidly coming up on my white Mini Cooper S and needed to decide what I was going to do.

  1. Refinance the balloon payment.
  2. Sell the car.
  3. Hand it back to BMW.

Didnt really want to refinance the car as there are a few things going on in my life right now which dictates that I dont want to take on any more debt.

Selling the car privately is a hassle and always will be.

So the only option was to hand it back to BMW, was going to do that when a friend of mine recommended Stoughton Car Sales in Guildford and Godalming.

Rang them and talked to a chap called Paul, he was immediately interested and in the end reached a price that was good for the both of us and did the deed.

So its finally gone and I am now car less.  Its back to two wheels for me for the moment.  For the details of Stoughton Car Sales (Surrey) please click the image below….

Stoughton Car Sales

The Bramley Cafe, Bramley, Surrey


The Bramley Cafe

Originally uploaded by paulfarrow

Well saw that the cafe in Bramley had re-opened after the last owners had left, so thought being a lover of cafe’s I would go and try it today.

It is situated on the high street in Bramley. Initial impressions: lovely smell of hot food and it was busy. I opted for the Bramley special which was a sausage, 2 pieces of bacon, fried egg, fried slice, 2 pieces of black pudding, baked beans, hash brown, bread and butter.  I also ordered a mug of hot tea and the whole lot came to £6.20.

The delivery of the food and drink was a little different to most other cafe’s I have been in around this area because the others tend to give you your drinks as you pay.  Here you pay, sit down and the tea is brought out to you. I guess this approach is a little posher but personally I like to get my drink there and then as you can drink and read your paper if you have one.  It took a little while for the tea to arrive but was quickly followed by my food.

Initial reaction – it looked good, food was hot and fresh.

You can always tell something about a cafe by the type of sausage they have on offer and this sausage was a very meaty one, it was delicious.  Minor detail here but could have done with a bit more bread and it would have been nice if it was on a plate because there was just too much stuff for the size of the plates they were offering.

Value for money – I would say it was a little more expensive than I am used to but it was nice to go to a cafe out in the sticks. It was nice so I am happy to pay a little extra.

Would I go back – Yes I would go back, probably not as often as my favourite cafe in Leatherhead but I would go back.

Our Time On BPOSS With BP Has Finally Come To A Close.

Well recently we were told that our team BPOSS is being outsourced to India.  Its been a long journey with some of our team working on BPOSS for 6 years or more.  Myself personally I have worked on the team at Sunbury for 4 years now.

Its sad because its our system, we have put in a lot of blood and sweat to get it to where it is now.  What is strange is that BP just seem to be biting the bullet and outsourcing everything and everyone.  All our knowledge of the shipping system is just about to walk out the door.

The current team

  • Tim Bridges – Project Manager
  • John Sparke – Lead Business Analyst
  • John Derbyshire – Technical Analyst
  • Andy Russell – Testing Manager
  • Scott Waye – Technical Lead
  • Simon Hewitt – Developer
  • and of course me – TEA BOY extraordinaire

So come the end of September there will be a ready made team available if any one has anything for us to do !!!! Its a superb team, having worked together for half a decade,  we gel really well.  Not to mention the wealth of  shipping knowledge between us.

Our skills are Shipping, Oil, .NET, C#, LLBLGen & SQL Server.

Any way better shut up and get the teas in.

Barclays Stockbrokers Have An Invalid Security Certificate

if you go to the barclaysstockbrokers.com url and try to login you get presented with an invalid security certificate error by firefox and ie 8.  The certificate is for www.stockbrokers.barclays.com not www.barclaysstockbrokers.com.

I have rang them and emailed them but no one seems that interested in getting fixed they dont see it as a problem.  Well in these days of phishing and spoofing I would say its a problem.  We will see how long they take to fix it, if at all.

UPDATE: 9 July 2009

Well eventually someone got back to me about it.  Looks like they have a problem with the login on the page as its hardcoded to stockbrokers.barclays.co.uk instead of the using the url that you actually come from.  I have been told by there technical bods that if you use the login at the top of the page it uses the correct url.  And it does work.  Come on Barclays sort it out so that all the logins use the correct URL.  I cant believe it took so long for you to actually come back to me with a sensible answer but to still see the site broken in this way is really unbelievable.  I expect quite a few people are having this problem as your eyes go to the login button within the site not the black bar at the top.

Looking at the stats on my page quite a few people are getting this error as the number of people coming to my site with the search words ‘barclays stockbrokers’ and ‘invalid certificate’ are quite high.

Nikon D5000 Gets An Outing To Boxhill


DSC_0035

Originally uploaded by paulfarrow

Well got the GP1 gps unit for the Nikon and decided to take it out to boxhill where all the bikers meet. It was only Saturday so not that many about.

The GP1 unit is good but took a little while to get used to it. I also thought I would try Flickr which this picture has been uploaded from. So photo was taken with the Nikon D5000 and the GP1 unit so it has the geotagging info in it. Then I uploaded to IPhoto9 and then uploaded using that into Flickr. I then composed a blog entry with flickr so will be interesting to see how this comes out here on the blog.

Alex And The Giant Pandas

Thought you would like that title, well my neighbour Alex Pool is off to China to be part of  Panda breeding programme for three weeks.  He is running a blog if you want to keep up with his exploits.

Lets hope he publishes some pictures of them as they are so cute.  Thats if China doesnt censor it all.

Any way I will be following his blog to see what he gets up to.   Link to his blog is in the blogroll section of the links on the right hand side of this blog. Actually any one looking at my blogroll would think I am a nutter (which I am) but what a mixture of titles !!!

Duchy Original Elderflower Refresher Not In Stock

Went to buy some Duchy Elderflower Refresher in my local Waitrose

and couldnt find a drop, now its my favourite summer drink.  Was told by an assistant that Duchy are changing their packaging and until that is finalised Waitrose were temporarily not stocking the product.

Weird, I have emailed HRH Prince Charles personally to find out what is happening !!!  Will keep you updated of any response from him.

Nikon D5000 – First Images

Decided it was time I got myself a digital SLR and saw the reviews on engadget of the new Nikon D5000. The price was good and I have been fed up with the camera on my HTC mobile, especially as I have been taking a lot of photos on my visits to the states.

Jessops this weekend had a sale on so bought the camera, extra lense, 8gb SD card and you got a free bag as part of the deal. I ordered the GP-1 unit for it as well (although have to wait 28 days for that) so that I can store the gps position of the photo as this seems to be the latest fashion in the world of photography.

I even negotiated about 50 pounds off the sale price. 🙂

Front USB Ports not working on my Shuttle running Vista x64 Ultimate

After taking the Cypress update my front usb ports stopped working.  How did I fix it well if you go to the device manager (right click the computer icon in file explorer, click properties then click device manager [left hand side]) under Universal Serial Bus Controllers (right at the bottom) there is a device shown now called HX2LP kit (3.03.0000.2) I believe this is what causes the problem so I just uninstalled mine and rebooted.

After the reboot I get a generic USB hub appear and the front ports on my shuttle SD37P2 are now working.

Also when I run windows update again I dont see that update any more.