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For some time now I have been having nothing but trouble with my 24″ iMac’s superdrive. The problem being that when ever I insert any type of media, whether it be blank CD’s, DVD’s, DVD-DL’s or any DVD-VIDEOvideo, Audio CD’s it just throws it back out without even attempting to read or do anything with it.

After hours of searching on the internet I found out that this is normal after a few years use….apparently it’s due to the dirt that builds up in the superdrive and when it keeps ejecting the discs the drive is ready for replacement, ok not too bothered about that but where the hell can I buy one from? I wanted to avoid getting one direct from Apple but it looks like I am going to have to give in and give them a call to find out how much a replacement drive is.

So why don’t Apple have them on their store? I have no idea either, there is hardly on eBay either so not sure if they are rare to come across? I can’t imagine so especially with them coming in all Apple iMacs. I have found one on eBay but I am not going to pay £100 for it, no way, no chance, not in this world would I spend that sort of money, for that sort of money I would want a Blu Ray writer!

Rant Over

GoodnightGoodnight reviews.

TodayToday reviews I recently completed my first serious training session for the National Three Peaks Challenge that I am going to be participating in.

You can read about the challenge on my previous post “My 2010 Challenge – What have I agreed to?! :-/ ”

We headed off down to South Wales to a bunkhouse that we had hired for the weekend and with me being the first person to arrive I had to go and collect the key from the warden. After multiple times of trying to find the place I found myself going up a narrow country dirt track (the kind of road I would have loved to have found when I had my 4×4’s) eventually I could see in the distance a huge cottage type building so carried on heading to that, I was shocked at the size of it and wasn’t sure if I was in the right place. I was! I got in and turned the alarm off, had a quick nosey around and opened the curtains upstairs and downstairs when another one of the team arrived.

We eventually got hold of the others that were turning up who had ETAs of around 4 hours after we got there so we decided to go and find a pub and a cash machine and get some booze for the house. To cut a long story short we found it very difficult to find a pub in Wales, I ended up downloading an app on my iPhone for 59p to find a pub! (There really is an app for everything) still it worked we found a pub, it was 0.5mi away, the only problem was we was on a huge dual carriage way with no way to turn around for miles, so I believe we ended up going around 30mi out of our way before we eventually got to the pub.

We headed back as one of the other walkers was due to arrive and so were the others. We had an evening of taking the piss of one walker who set off from LondonLondon reviews at 5:30pm and didn’t get to Wales until 11:30pm even when using Sat Nav and pretty much no traffic!! We drank, drank some more and had a laugh and just basically getting to know each other.

We got up and 6:30am this morning headed downstairs and had a dirty great big fry up and also a few drinks (non alcoholic) before getting ready and setting off out of the bunkhouse at around 8:30 and headed to the Pen y FanFan reviews car park.

We headed up the first bit and after the first 10 minutes (just remember I am a guy who does no exercise and probably hasn’t for at least three years) I really thought I was going to have to turn back and give in, I had the most horrendous headache, dizziness, sickness feeling and basically I thought I was going to collapse. EventuallyEventually reviews I just put my head down and battled my way through the snow and ice on the hillside and left foot right foot, left foot right foot until I came to a rest point, that was it I had managed to get to the top of the first steep incline and now it was time to tackle Pen y Fan!

This was the second incline of the day and we only had another 2 after we had completed this one. We struggled but eventually we got to the top and had a sit down, it was an amazing achievement but by this point we weren’t even a quarter of the way around the walk we were going to do!

After a few pictures had been taken, some light snacks and a few cups of coffee we were ready to start climbing back down and onto the next challenge.

It was a real struggle and after battling with some near vertical climbs, sore feet and an amazing time with some good laughs we made it to the end, I wont bore you going on about how we struggled with all the other climbs but we all made it and what was more amazing we were all alive and felt really chuffed with ourselves for this achievement. We completed a 15mi walk in 6 hours not including the inclines that we did.

Here are a few photos for you to look at taken from my iPhone so not the best quality! More to come though!

Sorry I have cut this short, I’ve just completed the longest walk of my life and the hardest walk of my life, drove 4 hours back from Wales and when I try to sleep I believe I have gone past the tiredness stage!

Next stop, Scafell Pike! We will be doing this twice in one day, one will be during daylight and one will be when its pitch black as one of our walks for the National 3 Peaks will be at 4am in the morning.

EnjoyEnjoy reviews the photos!

Or you can view the main gallery here http://rzy.me/fp

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Last year the company I work for decided that the IT department were going to do a challenge for the GOSH appeal. I put my name down for the challenge as I haven’t ever done anything for charity and this even was certainly going to help me in my run to getting fit.

The challenge they decided upon was the National Three Peaks Challenge, which involves climbing the three highest peaks in the UK and completing the walks within 24 hours including travelling.

The peaks are:
Ben Nevis (Scotland)
Snowdon (Wales)
Scafell Pike (Cumbria)

This kind of reminds me back in AugustAugust reviews where I made a post “Getting the urge to do something crazy…” This certainly is crazy, I am the most unfit person known the man, I get a sweat on just thinking about walking anywhere, if I could take the car anywhere no matter how far away it was, even if it was just popping to the shop for some bread I would take the car. This is going to be a real shock for me but I really am looking forward to the challenge.

This week I will be heading to the Brecon Beacons National Park in South Wales to tackle Pen y Fan which is the highest peak in South Wales, this is going to be the largest walk that I have taken part in it sits at 886 metres above sea level! I did a little walk the other day, well it seemed like miles and miles, in theory when we had finished I stopped the iPhone app and found out it was only 3 miles….not even half the distance of the smallest of the 3 peaks…

How I will be using my iPhone for this adventure
I will be keeping track of my walk using my iPhone. The app is called RunKeeper and uses your iPhones GPSGPS reviews system to track your location and plot your route on a map. It’s not always very accurate but you can edit the the route to the exact route you took. I won’t go on about the app too much but if you take a look at RunKeeper website you will find all the info you need, their is a free version and a pro version.

If you want to keep track off all my walks and training then just view my profile here http://rzy.me/LV

The Gear
Preparing for this challenge certainly hasn’t been cheap, I had nothing, no walking boots, no water proof clothing, no walking socks, no back pack so as you can imagine when I went to the Go Outdoors store in Wakefield I had a pretty huge bill! I also couldn’t believe it that you can actually buy coats that cost £300+ what the hell is all that about? Saying that my dad bought a beauty for £218.

So far I think I have everything that I am going to need:

?        walking boots
?        walking poles
?        waterproof and windproof trousers
?        waterproof and windproof coat
?        windproof balaclava
?        walking socks
?        first aid kit
?        head torch
?        torch
?        hip flask
?        rucksack with hydration pack
?        base layer T-shirt
?        plenty of food
?        an extra shirt
?        hat
?        gaiters

I think I have listed everything I have bought, their has been so much stuff that I don’t even know what else there is anymore! If I have missed something out that you think I will need then please give me a shout or leave a comment on here, I need to make sure I have everything for this!!

The company I work for will be providing compasses, maps and one other member has a navigation system so don’t worry if they are the obvious ones that you notice that aren’t on my list!

Oh and also my iPhone with the RunKeeper app installed!

Quick overview of the challenge then
The Three Peaks Challenge involves climbing the three highest peaks, respectively, in EnglandEngland reviews, Wales and Scotland, within 24 hours. The Peaks are:

* Snowdon, in Wales (1085m)
* Scafell Pike, in England (978m)
* Ben Nevis, in Scotland (1344m)

It is a popular misconception that the three peaks in question are the three highest in Britain. Over one hundred peaks in Scotland are higher than Scafell Pike, and 56 higher than Snowdon.

Climbing times

MaximumMaximum reviews climbing times are generally suggested as being around 4 hours for Snowdon, and 5 hours for Ben Nevis and Scafell Pike, but you should aim for a half hour or so under. In itself this time isn’t unrealistic for most relatively fit people, but it’s certainly not a gentle walk, and when three climbs are required within 24 hours the Challenge becomes more difficult, draining your energy and depriving you of sleep.

In order to attempt the National Three Peaks Challenge safely, you must have an adequate level of fitness.

More information about the 3 peaks challenge
For more information please visit this link:
Three Peaks Challenge website http://rzy.me/fa

My final words
I have told myself I will start taking sponsorship as soon as I prove to myself that I can complete Pen y Fan then its all systems go, training every weekend and days through the week, this is not just a challenge for a good cause but also a personal challenge for me of losing weight and starting to be more active rather than as my mrs @eckafatcat would say “living in my own little bubble”

This could very well be the last blog post I ever write, maybe I will not make the Pen y Fan and survive? We will soon find out, during my trip around Pen y Fan I will be taking lots and lots of photos posting them on the RunKeeper app which will publish them onto the map that it plots, I will also be creating a gallery on my blog and also twittering photos en route.

LinksLinks reviews you may want to see
My Galleries                         http://rzy.me/8d
My RunKeeper Profile         http://rzy.me/LV
My Sponsorship Online        Coming soon
My Twitter Photos                http://rzy.me/3
My Twitter Account                @rhodzy
My Facebook Account        http://rzy.me/fb

It would be great to hear from people who have completed the challenge or people who are also taking up the challenge, if so please get in touch via one of the following links above.

I’ll leave it there for now but will update as soon as I complete my walks! Then I will post something just before I take on the challenge.

Oh by the way, we are taking the challenge on at the end of May so not much time!

Well the title explains it all, tonight I find myself in a hotel that has, No internet connection, a 14“ portable TV with only 5 channels, a rock hard bed, no charges for phones or laptop.

The problems didn’t stop there, I found myself filling in the breakfast menu but the only problem was I didn’t have a pen! Grr permanent marker it was then, that didn’t work out very well infact the menu looks a right mess, lets see if I get my breakfast in the morning!

Laptop going flat now and so is the iPhone and Blackberry so I will leave it here for now!

There is some plus points though, this hotel has the fastest taps known to man, a full bath in 30 seconds?! Even my house takes around 10 minutes!

Also proper pepsi served in the bar!

Bye for now

Well it certainly has been one of those days today, I was supposed to go and travel down Bournemouth for work and spend a couple of nights down there but as you can probably tell by me saying “I was supposed to go” kind of gives it away that I didn’t actually make it.

I had a warning from someone at the office down there last week asking if I was sure I would make it as for this week there has been a severe weather warning and like most things, I just thought the weather is never right, they didn’t see the floods coming nor did they see the bad winter we had last year nor did they expect the one we had back in DecemberDecember reviews 2009.  So me being me said yeah I would be fine.

I woke up at 6am and there was heavy snow outside and it was still coming down. I went and defrosted the cars getting ready for the journey as I thought it would stop and probably clear and so my wife could get to work also I did her car too. (How very wrong I was) I can honestly say I have never seen this much snow in my life, its something you expect to see in films or a JamesJames reviews bond movie when fighting in RussiaRussia reviews or something. It is very fun to play in and watch the dogs run about and also very exciting, it’s bring out the child in me.

It has continued to snow for 11 hours solid with no signs of it slowing down, as I look out of my window right now the flakes are actually starting to get worse and bigger and come down a little slower but still much larger flakes! There has been a severe weather warning on the news for my area (south Yorkshire) and also for (west Yorkshire) where I work.

If the news is right the snow will continue through the night and will also continue for the rest of the week.

This country isn’t supposed to be this white over with snow! But I love it!

Check out the Gallery below, you will see some of the photos I took with my iPhone and I will soon be updating with more photos when I get them off my camera!

EnjoyEnjoy reviews!

Oh by the way when I measured how deep the snow was in my garden at 4:30pm it was 6.5 inches. I will do the same thing in the morning and update this post!

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Last year I decided that I was going to start saving all the funny content I find throughout the year and blog about it at the end.

I only start this in DecemberDecember reviews 2009 so I can’t really post alot of items, infact I only have 2 photos that I am going to post, but I have decided to take this on throughout 2010 and come december should have some pretty cool stuff : )

So this is what I found in DEcember 2009.

Those two photos had me laughing : )