Archive for the ‘Life’ Category

We’re becoming increasingly annoyed with The Library. The food is sub-standard and quite frankly that is hard to achieve when you run a student pub. It’s not like it’s any cheaper than anywhere else either so they can’t really play that card.

On the plus side though we have some very productive discussions – including the decision to rename Lil to Ubuntu.

A much overdue return to Wendy House arrived last night. While the music was it’s usual mix of good stuff and bad stuff it was at last a reasonably quite night with enough people on the dance floor to give it some atmosphere but plenty of space to dance.

On Saturday night I attended the annual BBQ of the North Yorkshire Humanist Society (so don’t get confused – it wasn’t a BBQ where we cooked North Yorkshire Humanists 😉 ).

The BBQ itself was good although I feel I was mis-sold when told it was in York as it was in a village just outside named Haxby – not a problem when you’re coming from York but on the far side when driving up from Leeds.

It was interesting to see the demographics in North Yorkshire, the age range is much better than West Yorkshire although this could have been disorted by the fact it was a bit more of a social event than a regular meeting.

They seem an active enough society though, they hold 11 meetings a year (just missing out August) which is more frequent than a lot of societies which take extensive summer breaks and they seem to have quite a bit of committee rotation going on.

Headed down to London for the AHS meeting on Thursday.

The station car park was full which resulted in me parking literally a mile away. Still cost me £3 as well because the parking ticket machine ate half of my money. I scribbed on the ticket though “I have this machine £3!” and didn’t get a ticket despite it expiring so one way or another I got an almost fair amount of parking (I should have only paid £2 really). Interestingly, if you phone the help number on the parking machine, you get a modem on the other end.

Got the train down fine and found my way to 1 Gower Street which was very irritating as I came from King’s Cross so I started at something like 137 Gower Street. That is one of the very annoying things about London – just because you’ve found the right road doesn’t mean you’re anywhere near where you want to be!

The BHA offices were nice enough, they were very much old converted houses with many small floors over about four different levels. We finished up there and headed round to the College Arms for a pint which again was small but nice enough.

Myself and Andrew were both getting the train back from King’s Cross so we headed off not long after though unfortunately by this point it had started raining. Having already got a coat I offered my umbrella to Andrew who hadn’t brought anything. This turned out to be somewhat of a mistake as the heavens properly opened and it began pelting it down, I was not impressed by the time we finally reached the station. Especially because earlier I had thought to myself “should I switch to my walking boots in case it rains?” and decided against it in the end.

It was also rather irritating how many people were on the train back to Leeds at 9:30 at night though it gradually thinned out as we headed northwards from an almost full carriage to an almost empty one.

It wasn’t the most pleasant journey back, I hadn’t brought a jumper because I was trying to travel light and I thought I could just put my coat on if I was cold but it having been soaked right through that wasn’t really an option so it was rather cold, especially with me not being overly dry. I did manage to get a discounted hot chocolate from the snack cart though which was most welcome.

By the time we reached Leeds I was ready to give up for the night (though I still had to drive to Halifax and back, but that is a whole different story – coming soon) so I gave in and jumped in a taxi back to my car. Well worth not freezing to death on the talk back to my car and more importantly, my beautifully warm Wikipedia hoodie.

Got home last night to find my exhaust was hanging off the bottom of my car.

This is the new exhaust I had fitted a month or two ago so I wasn’t overly amused. After having duct taped it back in place this morning I phoned my local branch of Alba and explained one of their other branches had put me it on and it was now hanging off and could they fix it.

They said no.

Apparently they also use different suppliers and have to go through those supplies so if I took it down there, they would then phone the branch that did the work and get them to order the part then once they had it it would be sent to the branch I was now at before they could do the work.

So I phoned up the branch that originally did the work who said bring it down and they would get it looked at.

This is where it all goes a bit wrong for the blog post really because shock of all shocks – I had a good experience with a garage! I took it down there on my lunch break and though I spent ten minutes just waiting for them to get round to me once they said they sorted it out for me and didn’t try to charge me either.

It kind of ruins the whole tone of the blog post really as I wrote the first half this morning before taking it down to them expecting to have loads more to rant about, but I don’t. Well done Alba, I guess.

If I did want to continue the rant however I could easily point out that these victories shouldn’t be so rare in modern life. I seem to spend most of my lunch breaks running around trying to fix one thing or the other – the extended blog post about housing that should hopefully arrive in the next few weeks (I’m waiting until it’s sorted so don’t hold your breath) is testament to that. Life shouldn’t be full of all these problems. It shouldn’t be a fantastic day when something is actually sorted as it should be. Still, that is the modern world I guess. Today was a good day.

Tonight saw the usual Tuesday night Atheist Society social which again delivered a fairly recent turnout given that it is the summer holidays and nobody is around. More importantly they managed to put some dressing on my burger this week which was most welcome 😉 .

Headed out to The Library for Sunday lunch today, ended up staying there for most of the afternoon before heading down to Oracle on the canel. We ended up finding the Waterfront Festival which had a live band on so we ended up spending some time sat in the sunshine on the waterfront watching the band.

Today is an anniversary. It’s been five years since I made my first blog post. Back in the day it was on Nerd Federation and I’m not even sure if I really knew what blogging was but since then I’ve go on to write over 1,700 posts on my personal blog alone as well as for dozens, maybe even hundreds of other blogs.

It’s interesting to see the generational shift between us and the previous generation. I, and I’m sure people like Will and Kieran feel similarly, love my blog as it is a fantastic opportunity to share our thoughts, opinions and adventures with the world. And besides, who needs privacy anyway ;).

There only being a few of us by 6pm we headed over to The Box for a few drinks. It made for interesting conversations with Rob being the boss, Lachlan leading the PHP development and Matt leading the Flex development as well as discussions of a global nature with Rob being Irish and Lachlan being Australian.

I really enjoyed by time at Open Door but I really do appreciate the geek that Buzz has – especially when you’re boss comes to work in a Squeezebox t-shirt.

Thursday saw Moz and Sarann come on their first HAG outing. While it wasn’t the best of nights with it having poured down a few hours before there were at least some people out and about so it wasn’t a wasted night. Better than Sophie & Jon’s first time!