Google Map Mania

Thursday 30th September 2010, Big Brother launched in a street near you. Forget reality television, forget Davina, it has landed, Street View Ireland is here.

Most of you in Ireland probably found out, if not yesterday, then definitely today that a full version of Google Maps Street View Ireland was launched this week.

Those reading elsewhere such as in the US or the UK are probably unimpressed or even interested in this exciting occasion as you have been live on Street View for sometime and will find this blog rather past its sell by date.

However, it was an exciting occasion for me; I had been eagerly awaiting this momentous day since a few months ago when I came home from walking the dog in my small town and had noticed the Google 360 van. Damn it! I thought to myself, no make-up, shabby tracksuit, hair scrunched up in my usual off to walk the dog messy style. I considered jumping into a bush or ducking out of plain sight and then remembered having already used Street View for the UK that Google would use Pixilation on all the faces anyway so no one would know it was me - except me of course!

I cannot even try to describe my disappointment when I eagerly Googled the riverside dog walk yesterday to find......... absolutely nothing but river..... no glimpses of my unkempt dog walking fashion sense, no collie chasing its own shadow, not even a boat cruising on the river or in fact any other sign of human life for that matter.  There were no cars in the car park and not even the usual few stray dogs that roam the pathway every single day were present.  Weirdest thing is that over the last two years that I have walked there, that car park has NEVER been empty.
Moving on from one disappointment to the next, I googled my own house address. Of course it’s not on there - that’s correct my street doesn’t even make it onto the map, just the entrance to my estate - let down number two noted. Final disappointment of the day when I checked another address we had lived in, it too hadn’t been completed and was still a partial building site.

Therefore like hundreds of other intrigued and shall we say, nosey people,  I went Google mapping my mothers house, my mother in laws house, my friends houses, in fact any houses I have set foot in over the last few months. I found myself on an experimental house stalker manic mission yesterday just in the vain hope that I may be lucky enough to catch a glimpse of something unusual or out of the ordinary going on in any one of our day to day lives.

It turns out that anyone I appear to know has a pretty normal, average, run of the mill street where absolutely nothing out of the ordinary happens - well at least as far as Google Street view in concerned. I was thoroughly dissatisfied.

Never fear though, I did get one result and I nearly wet myself when I realised the last house we lived in was under an incorrect address and we were in fact there on the big day the van came to town. Our proud red Mazda in the driveway, the windows wide open on the top floor, my best friend living next door had her front window open wide for burglars to come in and attempt to steal the giant television that would take an army to shift around the room never mind out the window. I was finally content.
I found my sanity again and realised I must seriously be lacking something in my day to day life when this is the most exciting thing that happened to me yesterday.

Today however I felt massively reassured of my madness when I switched on the radio to hear almost a whole 2 hours of talk show dedicated to Google Maps Ireland going live and the mad investigations people have been up to in the last 24 hours. I knew it! -there is in fact a whole population out there Google stalking addresses while we speak.

It appears that some people are using Google maps to spy on their partners, checking that their beloved other halves were not up to anything. Seriously, what are the odds of being caught on the one day the Google van drove up your street? More often than you would think - Last year Google removed various Street View images in the UK which were the subject of public complaint.

 

A furious housewife called in divorce lawyers after spotting her husband’s car parked outside another woman’s house, she saw the Range Rover while snooping on a female friend’s home. The hubby had claimed he was away on business, but his wife recognised his motor immediately because of its blinged-up hubcap. Private Detectives across the country will be shaking in their boots!

 

Back to Ireland though, It does appear that some interesting views did manage to sneak under the Google radar.

On my search I even found Father Ted Crillys house on the fictional Craggy Island.

Father Teds House

By far the most amusing, are the two lads who drove around a quiet leafy suburb of Dublin chasing the Google Car and mooning at every opportunity. Obviously had a lot of time on their hands! They even made the headlines in the Irish Times today. These lucky boys and their derrières have also been the talk of a number of radio shows today.


Irish Times Report

Mooner 1
Mooners 2

Pranks aside does Google Maps 3D mean the age of the good old fashioned street map is well and truly dead in the water. Having already suffered the momentous blow that the sat navigation generation has precipitated this must surely be the nail in the proverbial coffin. What better way to see exactly where you are going than a 3D walk down the street? You can visit the hotel you want to stay in and see if it really is as per the brochure says? You can see where the museum is and even where to park for ease. 

Consider this though; it must be a double edged sword for some industries, for example look at the housing industry. Websites like Daft, My Home.ie and estate agent sites are an increasingly popular tool in the selling of houses due to the internet generation expanding to almost every household. Now not only can you view all those lovely (often doctored) pictures of inside and outside the house but now you can walk down the street and see if you have a dilapidated run down shack 3 doors down, squatters with burnt out cars or the house that we all know and love that has a garden full of white goods with has more furniture on the outside lawn than inside the house in the front room.

Does it ruin our spirit of adventure? We go to a hotel for a weekend away and we don’t need to explore outside as we have probably already done that on Street View- Does it take away the excitement and anticipation? Only if you let it.

I take it for what it is, another useful invention, quirky and maybe even a little bit addictive for the stalkers amongst us..

At least it is still partially true what they say - you never know what goes on behind closed doors -but watch this space. Big Brother is watching you..... from a white van parked on your street and more closely than you think.

Spiders from Mars

It is true when they say that dogs are mans best friends; this morning my dog turns out to be the best friend I have ever had.

I arrive into the kitchen and stop dead in my tracks - 2 dead spiders on the kitchen floor and there is our Border collie sitting with what can only be deciphered as a smug look spread across his little black and white face. I don't think I have ever loved or been as proud of my dog more than today.

For all those spider lovers out there, it is probably best that you give this post a miss, as trust me you will end up weeping if you continue to read on.

I am no fool; I am well aware of all the significant good works that the household spider carries out, for example eating flies. Solution: I have fly spray (raid) in an aerosol which quite efficiently terminates the flies and leaves much less mess than the spiders do in any case.

I am also not prepared to listen to anymore age old clichés about it being a good sign that you have spiders patrolling your homestead, for someone once said it means that I have a clean house. For the record I do not require a few 8 legged arachnids to tell me that I have a clean house - I spend hours on my hands and knees cleaning it personally so I can vouch for myself that my living space is perfectly clean.

I readily have a shoe in my hand ready to whack. I have tried the glass thing, but if I am in the house on my own, I can’t bear to see it stuck in there looking at me, tapping one leg in disgust that I managed to trap it. Anyway that is if I manage to get the glass over the bugger in the first place - they have the speed of Lewis Hamilton most of them.

Arachnophobia is apparently one of the most common phobias that people can suffer from. I have never been officially diagnosed but let’s just say I am 99% sure that I have a major problem with the 8 legged creatures that haunt my dreams as well as my day to day life. Indeed this may seem irrational to some but to others out there I know you are reading this and appreciating my spider loathing pain.  Do not attempt to tell me they are more afraid of me - in my case they appear to run TOWARDS me like an army crossing the enemy line.

It has often been considered that this seemingly irrational fear came from our evolutionary process and is simply a genetic malfunction stemming from a response to feelings of danger. Alternatively other camps suggest it may be a cultural trait that has been inherited over time. In some parts of the world where people eat spiders you will find a much lower statistics of people showing a genuine fear of spiders.  

However did you know that in our own Western culture up to 55% of all women suffer from arachnophobia and up to 18% of all men.

To be honest the professionals out there can deal with the statistics -as far as I am concerned it is a very real issue to me in the here and now and I have tried a number of things to try get over it.

You name it, I’ve tried it. Self help books, videos, trips to the zoo, forcing myself to face them. The worst experience of self help was when I met one of these travelling reptile people. The lovely man in green overalls came to our school once. He told me that he could "cure" my fear. I nervously held out my hand when requested and I could feel the soft almost pipe-cleaner like fabric on the palm of my hand. I opened my eyes to the dead black and yellow and maybe a little grey as I remember, tarantula.

It turns out that using dead tarantulas is a tool to calm people. Where they got their research from I shall to this day never know but I expect probably some charlatan from the Amazon jungle.  I was anything but calm. He then proceeded to turn the large hairy spider over to show me its “harmless" 2 bright white shiny fangs.

I have to admit, thinking back I considered myself extremely brave as I was still standing at this point and my heart was at least still beating. I actually felt a little proud of my achievement, so when he asked me to take it again, full of self assured confidence I held my hand out. No problem said I to myself, here comes the pipe cleaner, open the eyes.... Something was very different ... the pipe cleaner moved.
That was the end of that, my scream could have shattered a thousand windows and the lucky blighter was lucky not to have found himself 5 floors down, out the window, squished by a passing car. I remember it so clearly like it was this morning in my kitchen with 2 dead spiders before me.

Unlike many genuine people who suffer from this, I can actually pinpoint where this madness first manifested itself. I had mumps as a child and was running an incredibly high fever at the time, the Dr came out to the house to see me and that was the night where it all began. A simple tissue in the bed sheets, a fever of 101 and hallucinations that the tissue was in fact huge spiders crawling all over me.

Over the years, there have been many incidents which have precipitated my problem - the pyjama party I went to when I was 10, where it was a great joke to tie a spider on a string and dangle it over me as I woke up. Then there was the time one landed on me whilst driving from my sun visor above my head, I am lucky to still be alive to tell that tale.  Of note this also happened to a male friend of mine who actually damaged his car in the fright. There was also the time whilst I was relaxing in the bath, I saw the spindly legs creep out of the overflow as this brave 8 legged blighter launched itself into my bath for a midnight swim. There was when I was studying for my exams and all my paperwork was lying on the floor - I heard that particular spider before I saw it with the trrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr noise it made as it dashed towards me sitting on the floor. We had one particularly nasty one that when my mother threw it into our coal fire it actually jumped out ALIVE! They truly are the stuff of nightmares.

Yes, over the years I have battled my demons and can now at the grand old age of 30, at least manage to stay in the room with one without passing out or hyperventilating. If I hold my hands over my eyes I can even sneak a quick look at one in a book or on the National Geographic channel. I adore reality television at its worst and of course like many I am fascinated by I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here. Yet I find myself having to watch it with a spider adjudicator next to me who can tell me when it’s safe to watch the latest bug infested trial.

This leads me on to the last 2 weeks of our normally peaceful home which has been taken over by an invasion of giant spiders from what can only be described as alien beings from Mars. HUGE spiders that look like the size of a mouse when they run at lightning speed across the floor. So big that when you try to drown them the ball they curl up into in self defence refuses to flush down the plug hole. There was the one that ran out of my mans trainer and this one was so big that my normally cool as a cucumber partner let out a little shriek of panic. The worst one was a few days ago when I went to wrap myself in a towel and the nasty gigantic spider ran down my arm and then leapt for the safety of the bath and the nearest plug.

Hence bringing me back to today.

My dog, my best friend, my new spider killing partner; I suspect a nice juicy bone will be on the table for the dog tonight with a side dish of whatever he manages to catch in the next few hours.

I shall leave you with this last tale of spider woe... and a great lesson to all.

A good friend of mine was in the bathroom standing over the sink, looking into her mirror at her get of bed look, whilst brushing her teeth. She reached out for the glass she uses for her rinse out, lifted the glass and looked in- she always looks in. Who doesn't?  She lifted the glass to her mouth to rinse and there he was - a big long legged black spider hiding underneath the glass and before she had a chance to react he had ran up the glass, over her nose, across her head and leapt for the bathroom light fitting on mission impossible.

As they affectionately say at the end of Crimewatch, "Don't have nightmares".

Oh and did I ever tell you about my mother’s fear of snakes..... Another day perhaps.

Milestone Mama

As I stood wiping the changing table with Milton fluid, a little voice I hadn’t heard before broke the silence in the Winnie the Pooh nursery;  "Ma-Ma". I turned on my heels and looked into the cot where my little 8 month old boy had been taking his afternoon sabbatical - I call it this as he never sleeps during the day, just what I would call resting his weary eyes.

As you know already from my blog, my little lad is a 12 hour a night sleeper so rarely sleeps during the day. Yesterday was just another normal day.  I had placed him in the cot 10 minutes earlier when his eyes had got heavy, his breathing became shallow and when he let out a little snore I quietly relished the opportunity to grab this precious 10 minutes to catch up on folding his clean clothes and blankets.

"Ma-Ma" again, a second time and the little arms reaching out for me from the cot.

I’m not an overly emotional person and so far in his short 8 months I have managed to keep reasonably composed over his developmental progress. I know some new mothers who break out the Kleenex at the sight of a new patch of hair or a different coloured number two in a nappy.

As the tears streamed down my face and I lifted him out of the cot I knew this was the start of a new era in his infancy.

It had started with a "ba ba ba ba ba " babbling a few days earlier. That was when the bets were placed. For those that know us, myself and my partner are consistently competitive; from everything to cooking to who drives best (obviously - I do). Our child was no exception to the competitive madness - even in the womb - I said boy, he said girl (I won that one again obviously). He said it would be da da to be the first and now the results are in. I won again, normality has been resumed and for the first time it doesn’t really matter who won.

There are no winners at moments like these, just sheer joy and elation that the little person you brought into the world is maturing at lightening speed.

Woke up this morning and there I find daddy saying "repeat after me"... "da da da da da da".

X Factor - eXcited or eXhausted

Love it or Hate it; The X Factor is back and it is TV Marmite, splitting the nation, the masses and probably even the classes.

Sadly there was no post from me over the weekend due to the mammoth amount of X Factor related television to catch up on - The main show, The X-tra factor and now X factor 24/7 (6 hours just short of a whole working day for some!)

X factor; My dad says reality television is the dearth of  television media as we know it - ask him who won the X Factor over say the last 3 years and he will definitely answer 2 out of the 3 winners correctly; this from a man who proudly tells his mates down the pub "he wouldn't be seen dead watching that rubbish!" and who secretly watches from the door when my step mum has it on the big screen.

The ratings speak for themselves, therefore I suspect the majority of the television watching society do secretly enjoy it and the ones that say they hate it cannot help but love hating it. Those that despise the show often get themselves involved in some way or another in the resentment process online; for instance the people that cant stand X Factor are often adding to the momentum of  X Factor TV takeover when they post on Facebook or Twitter about their loathing. You can guarantee that come Saturday night every weekend for the next 12 weeks, 6 out of the top 10 trending list on Twitter will be X factor related.

Then you have the strange group of people like my aforementioned dad who say they hate it but cannot tear themselves away in private. A good example of a hater not realising their secret appreciation for the show is my reality TV despising partner who every year says to me " I'm not watching this, its a fix, its premeditated, Simon Cowell is the puppet master" etc...   but here we are September 2010,  Saturday evening, he sits down with me, gives me his running commentary of how bad people are and we play the obligatory competition in Week 1 of lets pick the winner from this years entrants.

It is true what they say, any press is good press for the X factor; look at the campaign last year on Facebook which saw a marginally small group succeed in keeping the X factor winning song  from not reaching the coveted Christmas number one spot which up until 2009 was a given. The alternative song, Rage against the Machine got there ironically with a song I loved in my own youth (many moons ago) when the Saturday night television gold was Noels House Party and the Generation Game. That's correct, cast your minds back to Mr Blobby, Gotchas, Gunge Tanks, the obligatory cuddly toy. You may wish to think twice about the alternative to X Factor here in 2010.
 
I know the big question that you want to ask is which side of the fence I park my TV viewing bum on ..... you don't need to.

Since becoming a mother and my social life walking out the door with my energy and ability to drink, I LIVE for X Factor and I shall tell you why.

1) I like most of the people watching find the audition stages and even boot camp sessions my reality TV guilty pleasure - there are people out there that can sing worse than me and are willing to humiliate themselves in appearing on national television to boot!
2) It counts us all the way down from Autumn to Christmas and I simply adore Christmas and X factor makes it come all the more quickly in our house. 12 Weeks to go everyone!
3) I love the competitive element of picking my winner - who cares which judge wins the show! I am told the bookies female footfall doubles on the X factor winning prediction! In our house its all about whether I backed the winning horse or if my better half does - for the record I ALWAYS win. I have an eye for the talent I suspect. Note: Simon Cowell if you ever get to reading random blogs I am available immediately to start and very flexible on salary and location.  
4) I also have this extremely healthy competition with a number of my friends and I love the weekly text conversations that go and back and forth while the show is on. I understand the mobile networks run at maximum capacity. I'm even pretty sure there is an I-phone app at the ready for the technology addicted folk with an insatiable need for new applications. The national power grid even surges at advert breaks while people put the kettle on or worse still switch over for a sneaky look at dare I say it Strictly Come Dancing.
5) I am additionally one of those eccentric people that love the buzz created on Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spy, etc.. the discussions and debate keep me entertained for the week until Saturday comes back around.
6) And finally to Simon ... I wait patiently for his wink... yes wink ... that little twinkle in his eye that says to us at home I love this kid - inside his head he sees dollar signs flashing and the next act to be dragged to America to fail miserably.

Shall we get to the nitty gritty though - THIS IS TELEVISION - NOT REAL LIFE, most of the acts that get through to the finals have been stage or vocally developed since they were old enough to be potty trained. The audition stages are pre-produced. I think I read somewhere that the statistic is only 5% of people that attend the auditions ever get to actually stand in front of Simon Cowell and his judging panel.  Simon Cowell is not one of the most powerful men in media without good reason; Cheryl Cole and Danni Minogue were nobodies, Simon has given them both the career revival they sorely needed. Louis Walsh is the dark horse - the butt of many a joke but a hugely successfully manager in his own right and will continue on  if and when The X Factor eventually winds down.

This years show promises everything we can hope for - we have already seen the abysmal auditions, we have the 12 grand a night hooker who forgot her clothes not only to her first auditions but to the whole weekend of bootcamp - Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman she aint! We have even at this stage already heard the eventual winner for 2010. From Malaria-gate, to Connie Huq-hate. Auto-tune to Simon and Nicole Scherzinger get a room.

People need to take the X factor for what it is - a very cleverly designed Truman Show for the Reality Genre.
Accept it. Love it. Hate it. I heart the Truman Show.

"Good morning, and in case I don't see ya, good afternoon, good evening, and good night!"

Facebook Armageddon

23rd September 2010 8.30pm approx  GMT London Time - Marked in Diary as Facebook Armageddon.

For two and half long hours ( which felt like two and half weeks to some) our number one favourite social media site crashed, went down, had a technical error whatever you want to call it - Kaput! Leaving the cyber world in what I can only call mass social media panic.

Across the world 500 million people lost access to their Facebook "life" for a mere few hours.
Funny thing is, Facebook which went live in 2004-only 6 years ago- feels like it has been installed on our computers since the dawn of time. If asked I could easily have sworn that I remember being addicted to it much earlier than 2004! ( I think my brain is losing memory cells at double the rate in my thirties than my twenties ).  There was a similar outage in 2006, however since then, this was the worst mass panic that Facebook Engineering have reported. Mainly due to the fact that in 2006 Facebook only had a fraction of the users it has today so the momentum of upset caused was fairly limited.

Anyway, I was privy to this momentous occasion yesterday and it got me to considering my own sanity when I too found myself feeling a little distressed, even anxious, that I couldn't message back my brother-in-law with a smart arse reply to his comment he had left earlier in the day.

So this strange event occurred; people started to panic, forums started buzzing, REAL emails came into my account instead of Facebook notifications, MSN Messenger got a boost of people going back to using it for chat features, Twitter was awash with tweets of worry and concern, "is it just mine", "is yours off", "mines working", "mines not", "whats happening"and so on . Even the verified celebrities on Twitter showed concerns that their Facebook was offline.  The one however that stood out to me was "I cant believe it what am I going to do now with my life now?"..........

What did we do without our Facebook pages? I am forced to admit that I do love mine, however I can also tell you that I definitely could move on with my life if someone shut it down in the morning. Sure another one would spring up or people will return in droves to MySpace or worse still  it could bring around cause for the reinstatement of Bebo - yes Bebo! You heard me correctly the first time, Bebo is a dirty word now amongst social media gurus but you know many of us went to that cyber evil too even if the "cool" ones amongst us don't publicly admit it!

Last night, Zynga games addicts must have gone into mortal meltdown - Farms will have withered, Fish Tanks will have filled with dead fish, Cafes will have closed with spoiled foods, Cities will have been demolished and the Mafia probably all got arrested and put in prison. 

For the record I am not criticising the aforementioned games addicts, as the real irony is that I am privy to so much inside information due to the fact that when I was pregnant and had far too much time on my hands, I subscribed to them ALL. I realised it was getting out of control whilst in hospital for 6 days after the birth and I said to my fella - "I cant believe it my farms gonna be dead now and I was so close to Level 55?????"
I was on a copious amount of morphine painkillers and that is the excuse that I shall remain with for such absolute moronic worry over an imaginary farm that required daily attention.

The outage got me to thinking though; 
Would I have contacts for the few hundred "friends" I have? Probably not.
Would I make endless chatter to people I normally wouldn't  just because they have a shiny green dot next to them and they are online? Probably not.
Would I subscribe to hundreds of fan pages just because they asked me? Probably not.
Would I find myself compelled to reeling through the news reel every day and clicking like?  Probably not.
Would I miss the pages of the most unflattering pictures of me ever taken - which are coincidentally then posted and tagged for the world to see? ABSOLUTELY NOT!


However I also had to consider the other aspects;
Who cares if you had Weetabix for breakfast and your coffee was cold?
Who cares if its your birthday?
Who cares if you have had the worst day of your life and just want to vent some anger?
Who cares if you are selling cheap tickets to Glastonbury because you broke up with your boyfriend?
Who cares if you need advice or support for your newborn baby which wont sleep at night?
Who cares if you don't want to be my friend anymore?
The irony of my post; WHO CARES?.......................I DO! 

Im not REALLY a morning person...

Are you a morning person? Stupid question if you ask me.

My overtired,grumpy man turns over this morning at 7.30am and says " that's your cue- off you go-our bundle of joy wants you" ... "Why?" I ask.... "because you're a morning person and I'm not" - Wish I hadn't bothered asking. Stupid questions will always get an equally stupid answer.

Apparently as I am able to get up for 4am flights with relative ease, this therefore constitutes the attributes of being the stereotypical morning person! -  only a mans logic can come to such a ridiculous conclusion.
Maybe I just wanted to get to the plane on time ?

Now I understand that in the grand scheme of things that I have been incredibly blessed with a baby that since he was 6 weeks has indeed slept a full 12 hours every night. That's right - I'm one of those smug witches that writes into Prima Mother and Baby and talks of my obviously perfect child that gives his mammy and daddy a full nights sleep. So I am going to apologise to all those other mommies and daddies and some dear friends of mine who are lucky if they get 6 hours sleep and are awakened at 5.45am promptly every morning with the demon "feed me" cry.

I shall state for the record I am not complaining, however if I may, my child that sleeps 12 hours a night absolutely refuses point blank to take a nap during the day - that blessed nap time where people can sit down have a cuppa, watch Loose Women, read a sneaky few pages of Heat magazine, catch up on whether Coleen has dumped Rooney and to get great satisfaction examining the celebrities without their make-up pictures, which make us all feel like it may be OK to exist in this celebrity body obsessed culture we surround ourselves with.
But no- no naps for us and trust me I have tried everything - songs, lullaby's,white noise, washing machine, hoover, total silence and before you say it - not even the car seat sends my little man to sleep.
It is like he has an automatic sleep switch; just as he is getting sleepy, the yawns, the heavy eyes - he sits bolt up right like something possessed and I can tell he is saying to himself " nice try mammy - you didn't get me this time!" and so it goes on until 8pm where the real sleep  finally seems to kick in.

8pm Mammy O'clock - nope 8pm is Cleaning O'clock and catch up on all the things I didn't get done in my day O'clock.

10pm now that is the blissful time of the day! Cleaning  - done, Clothes ready for tomorrow - done, Maybe even some mammy and daddy time? - eh no it is time for pure unadulterated .......... American TV bliss- Mc Dreamy/Mc Steamy/ McAnyhotDrthatscrubsupwell. Escapism at its best.

Later finally getting into bed - my fella rolls over and says "turn the BIG light off babe..." I consider asking the question "Why ?" and my senses get the better of me,

I'm not a morning person. I'm not an evening person. I'm not even a night person. I'm just the idiot who will do anything for a bit of peace and quiet person (wink!)

1st Day Return

I suspect with the coming posts, days, weeks, months and even years it will remain ever apparant that I am somewhat pushed for time. Time appears to get away from me as my last post only 13 hours ago now seems only moments earlier in my life flashback that would make LOST seem uncomplicated . That unfortunately seems to be the story of my life. I am certainly not complaining, I am simply amused that by now I have managed to steal MY laptop back from my lovely partner in crime that I am A) too tired to think nevermind type; B) busily still trying to get around to all my replies on Facebook, Twitter and Linked In and C) trying to get out the chocolate cake crumbs that are stuck between the keys. ( and yes I put the crumbs there! obviously not deliberately although I could easily keep PC World  in business and recession resistant with repairs and chocolate cleaning appointments. I look forward to tomorow or is that now today?