Liverpool FC’s Renaissance

Over recent years, other than several significant Cup wins, Liverpool’s record in the Premiership, or the old League Division One as I still like to call it, hasn’t been great. Specifically, they’ve not won it since the 89/90 season.

I am lucky enough to have experienced the “glory years” as some call it, where winning the league, was almost taken as a given, and if we didn’t win, second was more or less a safe bet. Since then of course, things have been a little different.

While there have been several false dawns, the current squad, under Brendan Rodgers, and more specifically the way he has the team playing, is certainly bringing back memories of how the Liverpool teams of old used to approach games. And I’m rather liking it.

A top four finish this year was my hope. Beyond that, maybe in a couple of years or so, with a handful of games to go, if there was technically a chance we could be in the mix for the title, I’d take that as a huge leap forward. Well it appears we are already there. If Utd beat City this week, and Liverpool win all their remaining games, we’ll be Champions. Do I think it’ll happen? Almost certainly not, but to get this close, and to see the way we’re playing, gives me great confidence for the years ahead.

I’ll subscribe to Rodger’s “only focussing on the next game” approach, but I’m sure there are many supporters who are already daring to dream?

Happy days….

M.

 

Quarter 4 2013 running summary…

Rather than spamming my twitter feed with constant updates on where, when and how long I’m out running, I’m going to try and provide a monthly and quaterly update on how many miles I’ve covered.

Since I started my running back mid 2011, I’ve now covered in excess of 2,500 miles. As some of you may know, my job can take me abroad quite a lot, so I’ve been lucky enough to be able to run in some pretty cool places. When that’s not possbile (or safe), a gym treadmill has to suffice.

So, the results are in, for October, November and December 2013 I clocked up 282 miles, which averages out at 94 miles a month, a little under my target of 100. Must do better in 2014! That said, in order to preserve the old knees, I’ve also started swimming a fair bit. Each day is likely to be a swim or a run, with probably one day a week off. Current “normal” run is 7 miles and usual swim is 1 mile.

Here’s to an active 2014!

M.

BT Infinity – well apparently not for me.

Getting somewhat depressed now. My local exchange was Infinity enabled nearly twelve months ago, but as BT fail to point out, at least outside of the small print, getting an exchange enabled for Infinity certainly does not mean you can look forward to an uplift in internet speeds.

The first port of call for the twisted copper pair once it leaves your house, is a local street side cabinet. After some research, mine is “CAB39” on Fleetwood Road in Southport. While BT may well have enabled the exchange that it’s connected to (in this case Churchtown), it sadly has not enabled every cabinet connected to it. And guess what, CAB39 is on the “unlucky” list. BT clearly have their reasons as to which cabinets they will enable, and those that they won’t, and I’d be astonished if it was for any other reason than what the return on investment is likely to be. If it’ll pay back quickly, it’ll get done, if not, at least for now, forget it.

While I’m in fairly highly populated area. I can only assume that the amount of folk hanging off this cabinet who have broadband must be small, and hence it makes no business sense (at least to BT) to enable it. Fine for them, a bloody nightmare for me.  Sure they’ve prioritised (rightly) those areas that had buttock clenchingly piss poor broadband (due to distance from the exchange), but since I have pretty good existing speeds of broadband (10 MB/s up and 1MB/s down), that’s no doubt deemed ok for now.

What hacks me off, is the lack of transparency from BT on this. Why put posters everywhere in the area saying BT Infinity is available, when clearly it’s not available to everyone. More to the point, there’s no way (at least to date) that they’ll commit to me when it might finally get done.

Seems like I’ll be stuck in a technological “Black Hole” for some time to come yet. That, or I just move.

M.