Blog ≫ 2026 ≫ I have been feeling guilty for years over this competition
I have been feeling slightly guilty for years over whatI thought was a rigged competition. I though I won a Gibson Les Paul in a competition that a friend ran about twenty years ago. I had it, I gave it to the bro-in-law because I couldn't play guitar, then I asked for it back and gave it to the nephew as I still couldn't play guitar, and then when I gave the beetle to the nephew I hinted that T1 is playing guitar now and I wondered if he could help at all in the electric guitar department..? It came back to us this weekend, and T1 is very pleased. He is a very moral upstanding citizen though and he couldn't understand why I ever had one when I couldn't play it, and I said, er, I won it, even though I can't possibly have won it. So I dug back through history and my memory is wrong, it was not a rigged competition. Here is mention of the competition, back in 2008 and it was for a different guitar. The competition was run by Gibson, not by popbitch, and it was for a Slash signature edition Les Paul, which this is not. I think this must have been sent to popbitch as a sweetener in order to promote the real competition. This is a very nice guitar, but it is the studio version, not the Slash one. This is maybe £1500 worth of guitar, rather than the £15,000 that the top prize would have been. So this one is more or less legit!
Here it is, it's still very nice:
Mum and Dad brought it on their visit this weekend. We've had a lovely time, not done much, but it has been nice. We got a takewaway curry on Friday night that they paid for, and it was great. Watched the finale of Traitors. Poor old James Acaster, he seems to have had a proper panic attack. I wish he had not been recruited as a traitor, he could have won it. Then went to Hythe for a bit of a charity shop bimble on Saturday, I got a book. Then I made a pasta based dinner on Saturday, while T2 went out trick or treating. Then we watched Strictly Come Dancing for most of the evening, and drank all the wine.
I bought Isaac Asimov's Foundation in the charity shop, sure friends have recommended this.
Premium bonds prize on Monday surely, I am owed. Then the money for the shares I sold should be there too, so I will probably have a bit of a spend up instead of sensibly keeping it for the new car deposit as I'd originally told myself, as it will be pay day this week too...
Did a bit of work and a bit of coding too, have rearranged the weather report in these posts for more reusability. Didn't realise it hasn't been added to run stats for ages. And the work was to set the AI running trying to solve a problem that I have not been able to, will see if it has managed it tomorrow morning. And also what kind of a bill it has run up if it has struggled with it. I also got it to make a summary of all the work I'd done on Friday. On Monday mornings we report back what we did on Friday and I always struggle to remember it all. It came back with a very impressive list, I will do this every week from now on, it made me sound very productive.
Light cloud + a gentle breeze, 9 - 12℃.
⬅️ Health stats 1/11/26 :: Another legit competition prize ➡️