SHELL, Buying A Home & iDVD

SHELL:
What are they thinking? After many years of avoiding SHELL gasoline stations because of IMHO inferior products, anti-social corporate practices, poor staffing and poor hygiene issues, a few years ago we started using the nice bright shiny new stations that began appearing and we found the products to be good, the service improved, the business doing its best to respond to criticisms, and the technical and ergonomic performance of the equipment that delivered the gasoline to the auto gas tank to be safe, odor free, spill resistant and pretty fast too.
All the SHELL stations in our area have recently undergone replacement of all gasoline pumps which reduced the average number of pumps from 6 to 4 and supposedly were offering more high tech and faster delivery to the tank. Over the last 5 weeks I tried the new station equipment 3 times, twice in one location and once in a completely different location.
On try number one, the metal lock that flips down to lock the trigger in place to allow hands-free operation when filling the tank became dislodged and because of the angle it dislodged to it pinched my finger between the base of the nozzle and the metal lock. The end of the metal lock was razor sharp and cut me and caused blood blisters as well. I reported this to the staff on duty and they told me they hated the new pumps and that they also were ruining paint jobs on motorcycles because they don't work properly at that angle. My injury was painful for a couple weeks and made it more difficult for me to use the keyboard.
On try number two, a couple weeks later, after inserting the nozzle and getting the gas flowing and locking the trigger in place, I began moving around the car washing the windows and headlamp lenses. After about one minute the nozzle suddenly popped out of the gas tank of the car and sprayed gasoline over the side of the car and also the concrete around the pump until it stopped after about 2 seconds. Quite a bit of gasoline got spread around.
A couple weeks later, on try number three, at a completely different location but with the same new style pumps, exactly the same spraying of gasoline happened except this time I happened to be close enough to get gasoline all over my pants and shoes as well. All the staff would do was give me my money back and loan me a soapy towel to wipe off my pants and shoes.
My wife and I will never use SHELL again until the new pumps are replaced with customer friendly ones. Be careful!

Buying A Home:
We are happy to report that my wife and I were able to help our daughter and her husband in making a solid offer on their first home *:-)

iDVD:
I made my first DVD using iLIFE '05! It works ok and I am sure I will get better with it over time but the image quality isn't great when the DVD is played on a PC. I'll keep practicing.

Happy Birthday You Know Who *:-)