I feel a bit better today. I'm just working through a whole bunch of stuff in my head. Easter weekend was an interesting one - a couple of weird things happened, and I'm still getting it all sorted and filed away in my brain.
Anyway. Someone on a forum I frequent posted a link to a blog called Postsecret. People send anonymous home made postcards with secrets on them to some address in America, and then they got posted on the blog. It's kinda weird, but compulsive reading. It reminded me of a site from a while back called Grouphug which was another weird confessional type website, though probably not as interesting as that was mostly the same old "I want to {have sex with|kill} my {best friend|teacher|boss|dog}" over and over again, and without the arty postcards.
Weird, huh?
I'm off home to visit my parents back on the Wirral for a couple of days tonight. Should be meeting up with a few friends there too. I've got a few errands and jobs to do while I'm there, but I'll try to find the time for a more upbeat entry about something halfway interesting.
I feel a bit like this.
Except, as the irony inherent in my posting the quote hopefully implies, I'm not going to thrash about it on the web.
My mother in law visited last weekend. We went out for a walk round Rutland Water and she bought us lunch and whatnot. Very nice.
She'd been to New Zealand on holiday just recently. She went for her birthday, kinda as a present to herself. She went for - wait for it - 5 weeks. I don't know how much it cost her, but I think she'd been saving up for 10 years. Anyway. She showed us her photos from out there. There were a lot of photos, and Alison was falling asleep by the end of them, but they were incredible. The place looks absolutely beautiful. I'd love to go there if I could ever find the time and money, but I think that's a long way off.
I think the only holiday I get this year will be going to Soul Survivor in the summer. I'm sure it'll be cool, but I wouldn't mind going abroad again sometime soon. Have to get saving I guess.
See you after the Easter weekend.
"crazy" is "majority rules". Take germs for example.
Germs?
In the 18th century there was no such thing! Nobody'd ever imagined such a thing -- no sane person anyway. Along comes this doctor...Semmelweiss, I think. He tries to convince people... other doctors mostly...that there are these teeny tiny invisible "bad things" called germs that get into your body and make you...sick! He's trying to get doctors to wash their hands. What is this guy...crazy? Teeny tiny invisible whaddayou call 'em?..."germs"!
So cut to the 20th century! Last week in fact, right before I got dragged into this hellhole. I order a burger in this fast food joint. The waiter drops it on the floor. He picks it up, wipes it off, hands it to me...like it was all okay.
"What about the germs?" I say. He goes, "I don't believe in germs. Germs are just a plot they made up so they can sell you disinfectants and soap!"
After years of science, big bang and evolution, I think I may be becoming something of a fundamentalist Biblical creationist.
Hmmm.
Someone showed me this Calvin And Hobbes comic yesterday. It's quite poignant, and really quite depressing too. It made me a bit sad to be honest.
Firstly, for those of you who aren't fans of Calvin And Hobbes, the strip might not mean much and you might not gather quite why I find it quite unnerving. Secondly, those of you who are Calvin And Hobbes fans will probably be relieved to know that it is not a Bill Watterson original, but has been doctored by someone.
Apparently a lot of people hold up Calvin as some poster child for ADD... I think that is a bit misguided really. Calvin is perfectly capable of getting engrossed in things and concentrating on them, it's just that the things he throws himself into are not homework, housework etc. I think it would rather devalue Calvin to say that all his antics were a product of ADD, be it a disease or whatever. I think it also makes light of ADD to be honest - I don't suppose ADD would be the big crisis it is if it were just a case of kids acting like Calvin.
In truth, I think Calvin is just an imaginative 6 year old having fun. He doesn't like schoolwork. He's a pain for the babysitter. He plays in a vivid make believe world with his tiger. Are any of these things at all out of character for the average young child? I think that is what scares me about the comic - that we might try to "medicate" away our sense of fun, our imagination, our youthful exuberance and innocence. I hate to think that we would try to crush that in ourselves or our children.
I think the world needs a bit more Calvin in it.
I watched Top Of The Tops on Friday. G4 (who oh so sadly don't have a website I can link you to) were on it singing their cover of Creep by Radiohead. Hearing them sing:
I'm a creep
I'm a weirdo
What the hell am I doing here?
I don't belong here
was almost too much for me to bear. I almost choked on the irony that was issuing forth unstoppably from the TV.
Talking of choking, I had a dream last night about trying to eat a slug. It was only small, but the damn thing was sticking onto my tongue so I couldn't swallow it. So that was a pretty rubbish dream on the whole.
Yesterday I was chatting with a younger (15 year old) friend of mine. I asked him how his day was, and he said it had been OK, and that they had played Quidditch in PE.
Um... what?
Quidditch.
Apparently some company has devised a game similar to the fictional game of Quidditch as featured in the Harry Potter books. A quick Google search reveals some information about people trying to introduce the game, this being a good example. As an aside, a similar search also finds this explanation of British words in the HP books for Americans, which might interest some of my British readers.
Anyway. The game as described by my young friend did indeed involve 3 vertical hoops at each end of the pitch, a ball to throw through the hoops. So far so good. Each team had a seeker, and the snitch was a small ball on a cone in the center of the pitch; when the ref blew a particular whistle the seekers had to run for the ball and whoever got it and put it through one of the hoops scored extra points. Close enough. Sadly no sign of bludgers and quaffles, but these pale in comparison to the the glaring omission of the most prolific quality of quidditch. I refer, of course, to the lack of flying broomsticks. Apparently these are not involved in the game. My suggestion that the players place hockey sticks between their legs and pretend was met with some measure of derision.
As ever, research into aeronautical household cleaning equipment is just not moving fast enough to keep up with the demand.
If I gave my wife Spam for our anniversary I don't think she'd be too pleased. I think the advert (if you've not seen it, it's at the aforelinked site) may contain some measure of irony.
In other spam news, some dumbass is spamming my blog comments with nonsense about free online poker. I've put a few things in place to prevent this, so it shouldn't happen any more. However, on the off chance that you make a comment with, say, "poker" or "texas" in it, then it will need validating by me before it shows up, so don't panic when your crucial comment about anything besides free online casinos doesn't show up immediately. Can't think quite when that might occur, but there we go.
On Monday I got called to a classroom to fix a printer. I couldn't do it, and told the teacher, and said we'd get to it as soon as we could. This should have taken less than 5 minutes, but as it turned out I was there for about 20, because she kept going on and on about how crucial this printer was, and how she'd tried any number of (inane) things to get it working and moaned on about IT and the school and her gas bill (??) and so on. I finally escaped and got back to some other work.
Yesterday I finished work at about 4:30pm, signed out and went to the car park. I had just got into my car, when I saw the same teacher heading to her car. I waved, then started my engine, put the radio on, and got ready to reverse out of my parking space. I watched the rear view mirror so I could see when she walked past and then reverse safely. She didn't walk past. I figured she must have gone to a car in my blind spot, so I turn my head to look out of the window to see where she is, and ARGH! there she is right next to my car. She motions for me to wind down my window, so I turn off the radio and open the window.
"Did you fix that printer today?"
WHAT?! I am in my car! I am trying to drive home! It has gone half four and I have signed out. I am no longer working. No, my car is not an extension of my office and I have not, in fact, merely come here for a break.
There followed several minutes of conversation about this blasted printer, and how it was so important and crucial that it got fixed and now the colour one was broken too and all the students needed it for their work and had we sent off the other one that used to be in that room and could we do that as soon as possible and so on and on and on. All the while I was sat there saying "Yes, yes" and "We'll try to have a look at it tomorrow" and the like, all the time desperately trying not to just yell "IT'S TIME TO GO HOME! I DON'T CARE IF THE PRINTER IS DEALING CRACK TO THE SCANNER!"
I eventually escaped and went home.
Still, it could be worse. I told my colleagues this morning, and one of them told me that one time he'd been accosted in the car park, while heading to his car to go home, by a teacher who was having troubles with their laptop. He said that he had to go home and... the teacher offered to follow him home so that he could have a look at it there!
Good grief.
No, it's not Mary Poppins. It's... Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time. The game that I've burbled on about wanting to buy, and which I've finally picked up on ebay. I'm over a year late in picking up this game, and to be honest I've been quite remiss in letting it pass me by. I'm not going to go into great detail about it, because as far as I know, there aren't many gamers in my (small) readership, and any among you have probably already heard about this game. Suffice to say, this game is a masterpiece. The graphics, the puzzles, the story, the combat... it's all brilliant - utterly superb. If there are any niggles, it's with the camera position and the controls, but I'm prepared to overlook these minor issues for a game with fiendishly clever puzzles, and that allows me to fight 4 enemies at once with a big hulking sword then rewind time with a magic dagger when I screw it up.
Anyway.
I went shopping on Saturday to spend a bit of my birthday cash, and picked up the Blink 182 and Franz Ferdinand albums. I'd previously ripped the Franz Ferdinand album (though I'm now making restitution for my copyright infringing ways, hence actually buying the CD) so I've heard that, but the Blink album will be new to me. I'm looking forward to it, especially after the recent news that they've split up for now. I also got X-Men and X-Men 2 on DVD. Nice. Looking forward to X-Men 3, but that's not due out till 2006. Oh well.
I need some new shoes sometime soon. My current trainers are disintegrating on my feet as I type. When I was in town, I found out that you can get shoes from a company called No Sweat that guarantees fair pay and treatment for their workers, much like Fair Trade does for food producers. I'm all for that, so I think I'll be picking up a pair next week.
Today is my birthday. I am 23. I woke up this morning to find that it had snowed. For the first time that I can remember, there has been snow on my birthday. Very strange. Alison will be cooking me steak for tea tonight, as a birthday treat, and tomorrow we are going to go to the cinema. We were going to go see Hitch, but it's not out till next week so we might go see Hotel Rwanda instead. Expect a critique of some film or other on Monday.
Talking of films, there's a new trailer for the Hitch-Hikers Guide To The Galaxy out and about on the web. You can pick it up over here. The site has it in various formats and sizes and whatnot. It looks pretty good. Interesting casting, good looking effects. There's some furore over Ford Prefect being black, but I hardly think it's worth causing a fuss over. So long as his personality fits Ford, that's fine. It's not like we knew for sure what Ford looked like in the radio shows or even in the books, so I'm not too bothered. The film is due out in June, I think, and I'll definitely be going to see that.
While I'm on trailers, there's also a Charlie And The Chocolate Factory teaser trailer, which you can pick up over here. I think it's really too early to say how this film will turn out. On the one hand it's a great story, it's got the excellent Johnny Depp in it, and it's directed by the brilliant Tim Burton. On the other hand... well, watch the trailer. It's twee in the extreme, but I think that's intentional. I'm sure the final film will be very dark and weird. I'm hoping so anyway.
Right. Back to work. See you all on Monday...
Hello again... I've got lots in mind to post about, but I don't really have time to organise it all, so here's a little anecdote about something that happened to me yesterday.
I was in a classroom fixing a computer, as is my prerogative. There was a bunch of students in the room with a teacher supervising them. I'm busy working on one PC, when a girl comes across to me from the other side of the room and tells me that her mouse isn't working. I figure it'll be the standard problem that the mouse has gotten all dirty, but the students can't open them to clean the mouse because we glue them shut, because if we don't them the little blighters steal the balls. Anyway!
I go over to see this non-functioning mouse, and sure enough it's moving really badly and I can tell it's dirty. I start by unscrewing the base of the mouse with a big regular screwdriver. However, the mice that the network manager (my boss) is currently buying are horrible little things - presumably they're the cheapest available, as there's no other real merit to them. It's impossible to get the base off without prising it off with a thin implement. The best tool that I have found for this job is a tiny screwdriver that I have on my penknife, like the ones you get in Christmas crackers for fixing your glasses, you know?
So I take my penknife out of my pocket, open the corkscrew, and take out the tiny screwdriver that hides in there. At this point the girl sees that I am 'brandishing' a knife and starts yelling at the top of her voice "Miss! Miss! He's got a knife! He's got a knife in school!". So I'm panicking a bit and wondering what to do and thinking I'm about to get hauled over the coals on my third day for packing 3 inches of blunt steel which just happens to have three screwdrivers conveniently attached. Thinking quickly I tell the girl "It's OK, I'm allowed to have a knife in school to do my job", to which she says "Oh, OK then." and calms down as quickly as she freaked out, while the teacher looks on in a slightly absent minded fashion. I then get on and fix the mouse and go on my merry way.
Weird.
So... 3 days into my new job, and I've got to say it's much better than the last one. It's good to be doing something I enjoy, and it's certainly much better now that I get to leave my office and walk from place to place. My trusty Walker's pedometer informs me that I have made... 5511 steps today. Still a fair way off the recommended 10000 per day, but it's only 4:00pm, and either way it's a vast improvement on the 2500 I used to manage in an entire day at my last job. Anyway!
I've been periodically looking at my site to see if anyone's been commenting. Never mind that very few people have (curses), there is the more pressing issue that this site looks absolutely appalling in Internet Explorer 5. I designed it with IE6 and Mozilla Firefox (which you should download and use, as it's a far better browser than IE. Get into tabbed browsing and you'll never look back) and it all looked fine, but in IE5 it's just awful. So, if you're looking at this site and it looks rubbish, then get a newer version of IE, preferably one that makes even a half-hearted attempt to follow W3C standards for CSS and the like, or even better, use the aforementioned Fiery Fox of Wonder. Or something.
It's the start of the month, which means I have some spending money... I'm going to buy the Oscar winning work of art that is The Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind on DVD. If you've not seen it, why not? You have to! It's a beautiful film. Perfect in a way that few manage. Rent it. Buy it. Come to my house and watch it with me. It's awesome. I'm also looking to pick up a game or two on ebay, probably starting with Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time. I know I'm a bit late to this party (the game came out last year) but I only just got the demo last week (in my pre-job-leaving fit of Internet leeching) and it's amazing. So I'll be picking that up.
Right. Back to Windows setup. Bye.
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