Well, I’ve recovered a bit now – so I might as well list the activities…

Saturday dawned bright and early (don’t you just love not sleeping?) so I pissed off to the train station. For 7.45 in the morning. Caught the train – well, actually the train that should have left 75 minutes earlier, but with Virgin being their normal cuntish selves it was late before it even started, so I got the 6.30 train to Oxford, starting at 7.45. Go figure.

3 and a halfish hours later, I got into Oxford. Not bad journey all things considered. One of the “nice” new Virgin trains, the Voyager (I think – could be the Enterprise, or even the DS9 *shrug*) and it was OK – better than the old sheds anyway. Plug sockets for laptops and mobiles, decent seats, quiet trains, no guards to check the tickets – it’s all an improvement. Not even too many knobheads on the train – I think they were still in bed, as opposed to previous journeys although it was still populated by one incredibly smelly person…

Anyway, got to the parental home just in time to help them set the place up for the first of the parties – a bunch of 25 friends. Had this been mentioned prior to my arrival? Of course not. Hey Ho. Still, a trip to Chiltern Brewery netted some decent beer which would help the weekend float past. Leaving the blackberry liqueur @ the parent’s wasn’t smart, but then again I never did get IQ awards…

Anyway, the party went well, and ended up with my father asleep inside while everyone else was still drinking outside.

Sunday was much quieter, involving a very hungover father (I wonder why), and seeing some friends, which was pretty cool.

Monday involved 30 members of the family. What a joy. Honest. I can’t deny it, I fucking hate most of them – in fact, pretty much all relatives. If I could, I’d do the kenny everett method, round ’em up in a field and bomb the bastards. But I can’t, so I have to put up with them. So all I can say is “thank christ for alcohol”. I won’t go into details of the day – they’d only mean anything if you’d met the family members, and I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy.

And then back up to Manchester on the Tuesday. To 600ish emails. I’m exhausted, but it’s been OK.

Oh, and it was good to get a letter from a friend in Oz today. Posted on the 26th August, so that’s not bad at all, really. Not a patch on email, but there’s still something about receiving a letter rather than an email.

Ah well, time to be travelling…

Right well, I’m now off to Nottingham to have a weekend with friends instead of family. Sounds like a much better deal, to be honest. I may get more chance to bung something on, but don’t hold your breath.

I’ve made a decision to not worry too much about missing days on occasion from the blog, it’s not like it’s an enforced diary or anything, so what the hell. And because of that I may or may not write stuff. So there.

Utterly shite day – lack of sleep leading to hallucinations all the way through work, which is never a particularly good sign. It’s left me completely shattered, yet now it’s quarter to midnight, and I’m wide the fuck awake.

God has a sense of humour, and at the moment is pointing at me and laughing.

OK, there’s now a new comments system in place. It means the Facking Northern Monkeys have lost all my earlier comments, so my apologies to anyone who’d left them up til Bank Holiday Weekend, but they appear to have dived into the ether…

And thanks to my brother for reintroducing me to the phrase “Facking Northern monkeys” from Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. It’s an expression that’s kept running through my brain since I got back to Manchester.

I also used it in conjunction with the comments system, which appears to have gone tits-up. Joy.

Crap Towns – I’ve lived in a few, and visited even more.

But for me, Coventry is still the out and out winner, with Bedford coming a close second.

Three days away. 600 spam emails. 3 minutes to delete them all. Life is good.

Oh, and the weekend was OK too – weird to see people getting older and all that stuff, but it all went OK. I’ll write more about it later, I think.

Not in the mood right now – I’ve just spent fourish hours in the joyous company of Virgin Trains. But I will write more later. Honest.

Project for next week : Figure out what the fiddly fuck Blogger is doing with the archives. I think it may just need a major kicking.

But that’s for next week. In the meantime, I’m off to have fun. Or at least see the family. Byyyyyyyeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Oh, and one final story of silliness to be going on with. I was going to add it into the previous bit, but couldn’t be arsed.

Well, it looks like the Gods of Insomnia have obviously deemed my sacrifice of sleeping hours sufficient, because last night was the best night’s sleep I’ve had in ages. Now I just need to work out what I did different that meant I slept like that.

Oh, and a hearty slap to the neighbours somewhere on my street who decided to have a full-on domestic ending with breaking glass, screams, and four carloads of fucked-off police at 3am. I heard it, woke up (or maybe that’s the other way around? *shrug*), thought various rude words, closed the window, and went back to sleep. Nothing short of amazing.

Other than that, it’s 6.30ish, so I’m away to Oxford, whistling a happy tune and lugging a bag that feels like I’ve packed it for about a month of away-ness. Have a good Bank Holiday weekend, hopefully not one that’s too wet, and I’ll be back in a couple of days. Unless something fun happens, or I decide to bung something else on here from Chez Parents. Have fun.

Checklist for the weekend:

• Train tickets  Check
• Clothes  Yup
• Laptop  Definitely
• Digital Camera  it’s there
• Power leads for laptop and camera, plus leads to connect the two  Yes, Mum
• Mobile  In Pocket (as always)
• Charger for Mobile, plus mental note to buy one with decent battery life.  Yeah yeah yeah
• Books  Yawn. Of course you’ve got ’em
• Washbag  Does it ever leave that bag?
• Sort out playlists on Lappy’s version of RealOne  Nope, haven’t done that, but I’ll do that in the first ten mins of the train journey. And yes, I do call the laptop Lappy. Don’t ask, OK?

There’s something I’ve forgotten, I just fucking know it. I’ll remember it when I’m somewhere around Birmingham Fucking New Street (which it turns out is it’s official name)

Nice to know that – yet again – Microsoft are shit.

I know I’m still using 2000, but the day is coming (and probably before the end of 2002) when this PC becomes a friend of Linux.

So, it’s not long now til I have to travel down to the parent’s place in Oxford. Lucky me.

Whether I’ll update after tomorrow for a few days is totally unknown – a lot depends on whether I can be bothered. But I’ve got four hours each way on a train to pplay with other stuff, so there’s likely to be new content (and possibly a fair amount of it) after the Bank Holiday.

Have fun…

Note to self:

When making chilli with jalapenos (for that little bit of extra kick) DO NOT then rub your eyes afterwards. (The onions were vicious too, made my eyes water, and I rubbed my eyes – I know, about as smart as a concrete block)

My eyeballs now glow in the dark. This is NOT cool.

Cunts. Absolute total fucking cunts.

“Who?” I hear you cry.

And lo, the answer bellowed forth “United Utilities” or “UU” as they like to be known. (I’m not the only one who thinks this stands for “Utterly Useless”)

I’ve just had a shitty solicitors letter from them saying “we’re suing you for the money which you haven’t paid us”. Pity that the entire amount got paid on the 1st July, and the useless fucking bastards have conveniently lost it. And when I ask them whether they “lose” the money of people who’ve complained about the utter shiteness of their so-called “service”, the phrase “Oh no sir, we’re not that petty” doesn’t exactly ring true.

And now I’ve got to wait til Tuesday to find out anything more about where my money has gone to in the wilds of UU’s bank account, because they’re useless fuckers. Obviously Friday isn’t a working day at UU. Come to that, I wonder if there is such a thing as a working day for them.

And yes, this should have gone into my own rants section, but fuck it, I couldn’t be bothered.

I’ll write more when I’ve calmed down a bit, and the keyboard isn’t bouncing across the desk with every keystroke.

Updated, 21.50 23/8/02
  What a surprise. Got a call – they’ve found the money I paid them, there’s now no need for a solicitor’s letter etc., and the rest of this year’s water rates has suddenly been knocked off my account by way of an apology. Amazing what can happen when you’re pissed off, isn’t it?

And another archive/set of changes to the home page of the site. God, you can tell I’m a techie, it’s forever changing, “improving”, and generally being tweaked. Still, it’s fun, and it’s better than sitting around watching effing soaps and the like.

Well, that’s not bad. Two permanent jobs applied for. Two interviews. One next week with UK space/rocket nuts for a Web techie, and one tomorrow with the people who do shitloads of psychometric testing. Who also need a Web Developer/Techie. How apt, the original psychometric test fucker-upper, interviewing with them. I wonder if they’ll make me take one of their tests?

Updated 23/08/02
They didn’t. And so far the supposed call-back hasn’t happened either. Hey Ho.

Maybe this is just my warped view on life, but during the ITV news, where they were saying about a man being arrested for murdering two children, (obviously it wasn’t on the BBC news, but that story was the first one I found the link to) was it really all that tactful to have a Birds Eye advert with Captain Birds-Eye surrounded by kiddies?

Isn’t it just a teeny-weeny bit dodgy to have an advert of a grown man surrounded by children? Or do I see too much into these things sometimes? But he seems like the paedophiles role model, living in a situation like that.

(Actually, it’s quite fun to use this Google search to look at all Captain Birds-Eyes different sites.)
Anyway, I’m sure it’s just me thinking into things too much. Hey Ho.

Ooops – thanks to H for pointing out I’d fucked up the link on the previous post – ’tis fixed now though.

And also for pointing out the CCS CSS fuckup when links highlighted in IE. My apologies, I hadn’t realised it looked that shit. It’s changed now.

That’ll teach me to check things in IE won’t it. I only use Nutscrape and Opera. Ah well.

Some people are too odd to be properly listed as anything other than “pretty fucking weird.”

In Other News, Sleep Deprivation and Insomnia have finally caught up with me, kicked my arse, and left me with some very weird hallucinations throughout the day. How blessed do I feel? Still, it meant that a day in the Data Entry department simply flew by. OK, I think my brain took 20-second naps on occasion – but it appears I continued typing during this phenomenon, so I got away with it. Not even “Falling Asleep with Nodding Head Syndrome” to lay claim to.

I’m going to check this link again tomorrow to make sure it’s not another hallucination. The idea of tree seeds being taken to the moon, brought back to Earth and then planted simply MUST have been dreamed up by some insomniac in the US Forestry Service – God love ’em.

Thanks Paul for pointing out the internal memos site. Much needed after a crappy day.

And True Porn Clerk Stories are invariably good for a laugh.

Yes, it’s official, I need to get out more.

Well, what a day. Season ends for both The West Wing AND 24.

And what was BBC1’s response? Mission:Impossible. I kid ye not. Perhaps it’s some kind of humour from the beeb, saying it was impossible to beat those two for ratings. But I doubt it. I was unlucky enough to go see M:I at the cinema – I nearly got chucked out, I was so abusive about it. So I put on the first 20 minutes to see if it was as bad as I recalled.

You know when they say how women’s bodies “forget” the pain of childbirth? Turns out my brain had done the same kind of thing with M:I. It was worse than I remembered. I didn’t think this was possible, but yeah, it was. Jesus, what a pile of horse-shite. Hooray for Hollywood indeed.

There are times when I despise Photoshop with a passion. I’m working on some graphics for a website idea, and can I get it do a nice simple equilateral triangle? Can I bollocks. I’m sure there’s a piss-easy way of doing it, but can I find it? Can I bollocks.

I’ll get there. To be fair, I love Photoshop when it gets to the more complex stuff, but for the basic piss-easy nobrain stuff, it sucks the farts out of dead dogs. I’d rather use MS Paint.

Right, it’s sad to even admit watching this, but I’ve just watched Parenthood on BBC1 – weirdly enough, it contained a line I’ve used a couple of times while not remembering where it came from, but now I know again. Anyway – they cut out the scene with the blowjob in the car. WHY? It’s fucking midnight, and they still feel the need to cut scenes from films? Aren’t we big enough and ugly enough to make our own decisions on these things any more?

OK, I know I’m so amazingly smalltime when I write this, but I’m happy with it anyway. The site’s been up less than two months, and today I’ve gone past 250 hits. I know, it’s pathetic, but all the same, I’m happy with it. Blah Blah, everyone has to start somewhere.

So there.

And in an additional “Now there’s a shock – not” story it appears that MPs don’t like using email.

Personally, I’m amazed more didn’t go “Email? What’s that? I’m from Yorkshire, and when I get post I go “eeeeeeeh! Mail!” Is that the same thing?”

Ah, the joys of Saturday morning. A combination of reading about upgrading the Internet 2 backbone (and if you’re wondering what Internet 2 is, go here ) followed by Internet enabled automatic lawnmowers.

However, I do love this idea – it’s one of the ones that you think “That’s so simple. Why did no-one think of it before?”

Still, that’s the results of an hours knobbing about today. Ho hum. I’m sure I’ll write more later.

OK – Top of the Pops tonight – Def Leppard AND Status Quo? The 70s revival is alive and kicking, obviously.

OK, fuck all happening today, so I can’t find much to report on or write about. My brain resembles a pile of crumbs on a breadboard – totally frazzled. Something to do with people using spreadhseets for jobs they’re not designed for.

But It means I’ve had enough of PCs today, so I’m not in the mood to do much. Hey Ho.

OK, now that Channel Four is having a seasons of films based on some VERY loose themes (“Teenage Flicks”, “Friends on Film” etc.) I got to thinking about obscure seasons you could possibly have of films.

Of course “Original and remake back to back” would be fun (Showing El Mariachi and Desperado, Nikita and The Assassin, Cage Aux Folles and The Birdcage, and Open Your Eyes and Vanilla Sky are the ones that spring to mind immediately), but then I came up with one for the real bobble-hats out there – Films that share the same location. Obviously just about every Western known to Man has featured Painted Valley in (I think) Arizona, but there must be some streets or something that several films have been shot on….

Just an idea, anyway

I’ve just been watching Apt Pupil, the film from the Stephen King novel with Ian McKellen in it. It’s nasty as hell, but I have to say that the more stuff I see McKellen in, the more amazed I am by his talents.

  But frankly, what the fuck is it with David Schwimmer? How can any casting director worth a toss in a brothel put him with someone of McKellen’s stature? He just can’t act worth shite. I’ve never seen him act a character as anything other than “David Schwimmer”. He’s abysmal – but then again, so are most of the cast of Friends, if not all of them. Actually, it struck me as kind of funny that Schwimmer had (to be way more complimentary than he deserves) a bit part in Apt Pupil, yet Channel 4 classed it as “Friends on Film” – maybe all his other stuff is even worse. Come to that, what the hell do I mean “Maybe”?

And having just sorted a fuckup on the rollovers (thanks Dreamweaver, for not putting in the preload images, and yes, OK, I should have effing checked), I now note that they’re not working on this page.

I’ll try and care tomorrow. I’ve had enough of HTML today. What more do you want? Blood? The comments system has fallen in nicely, Blogger’s working smoother than I expected, the preloads are sorted on every page (How I love bulk find/replace) and frankly the rollovers on this one page can go and whistle for now.

So there.

Right, I think/hope this is just me hallucinating, (and it’s also weird in connection with this post in Wherever you are) but I’m sure I’ve just heard Nine Inch Nail’s track “The Perfect Drug” as a background to a Vodafone ad about texting… I’m sure there’s a social comment there, but as per usual, I can’t be arsed. It’s just it seems weird, hearing a purportedly anti-corporate bunch on the backing track for Vodafone. Or maybe that’s just me too…

Many thanks to Paul for linking me to this story about why developers get demotivated.

I’ve seen the same thing far too many times to mention.

See, I told you it’d happen – no sooner has it started than already I’m missing a day. I know I was going to write something yesterday, but I suppose the three hour phone call to Jeneva, a friend of mine, probably stopped that one in it’s tracks. I find it quite scary when me and her decide to challenge things like IMDB. (the Internet Movie DataBase – a site so bobble-hatted it should be put on a soap and called Benny) (and in a total tangent, why is it that this search produces images such as windows logos, violence and gore banner images, and the like?)

The sheer amount of knowledge of truly garbage 80s TV is intensely scary – for instance, she even remembers a fifth member of the A-team, Amy Amanda “Triple A” Allen who I’d never even heard of. Unfortunately, I remember it now…

I need to get out more. Or at least to stay in less.

Just a brief addition – I’ve got to say, I’m getting well and truly addicted to 24, the American TV series. There’s only one hour of it now to go in the UK, and I’m amazed about how well-behaved the press and so-on have been in not revealing plot twists etc.

So, next Sunday, I’ll be watching the final episode. And if I’m really sad (which anyone who knows me already knows the answer to anyway) then I’ll probably end up with the entire series on DVD before long too.

So there – absolutely irrelevant, but still somehow relevant to me. Go figure.

And another day floats past in a haze of insomnia and farting about. I did read this story which is kind of cool about the heat from jet exhausts screwing up the weather, but that’s been about the high point on odd stories and sites. I’ve been busy cursing Yahoo! all weekend, as the entire thing has been running like a three-legged dog on morphine, but that’s just incidental.

Actually, I was cursing them even more last night – I was trying to find the code snippet that let’s you say whether you’re online or not – can’t be that difficult, yahoo does it. But can I find it? No, I can’t. I’m sure it used to be there. Ah well, I’ll keep on looking.

But other than that it’s been a quiet weekend, for once. It’ll be nice to get paid properly again at the end of this week – that’ll make life much more fun.

Well, the day’s been exactly what I wanted and needed today – I’ve done absolutely fuck-all on a “getting out more” scale, and instead stayed in, vegged out, watched some of The West Wing on DVD, faffed about with websites and the like, and generally did sod all. It’s been good – and much needed.

But of course it does make for a vary boring blog, which is probably par for the course. Ah well – that’s the way it goes…

Starting With Blogger

Actually, I tried doing this when the site first started, and either Blogger was having a really bad day, or I was, but it wouldn’t bloody work for the life of me. So I gave up. Which, I have to say, is a bit of a rarity in itself – but no, this time I just thought “Keffing piece of crap” (thanks Anna) and left it.

And now I’m going to have to go back to H and say “Ok, I was wrong, and a fuckwit – blogger can work” – she won’t be happy. Or maybe she will, I don’t know. I’ve been kind of providing advice so I’m likely to end up as the Blogger guru if I’m not careful too… Ah, the life of a techie.

Hello (First Post)

Ok, this is all a bit of an experiment for me. I’ve seen blogs done properly, and I guess that they’ve given me something to look up to.

Or at least something to look at every so often and say “Yeah, they’re still better than I am” – and that’s fine with me.

I always worry about things like this – they start off with such great intentions, and then in a couple of weeks there’ll be blank spaces, empty days, and I’ll wonder what I did with them. So it’s all a bit of an experiment for now, and I’ll see how it goes. That’s all for now.