Archive for the ‘Life’ Category

Thursday saw us do a second session of podcasting. Luckily my new studio mixer arrived that very afternoon so we were able to huck up all 4 microphones and all the sets of headphones so that pretty much everyone could have their own mic and headphones plus I dropped my Maplin on my way home to pick up a few more accessories.

Paul, Moz and Nicola turned up along with Liz and Sarann eventually joining us which resulted in a good solid number and some random conversations. We made it through 3 episodes though didn’t really manage to discuss any of the official topics for any length of time lol.

All in all it was really good although we were up talking until about 1:30 or something and because I had work to do after that my early night turned into getting to bed at 3:10! Needless to say I was rather tired Friday morning.

When I left work on Wednesday, it was dark.

Though that was mainly due to the fact that I didn’t leave work until 21:45. That was a long meeting. Dean said it would finish around 6 when we first planned it. Of course none of us actually believed that it would ;).

I headed over to Napa to get in a quick drink for Michelle’s pub thing before finally grabbing some dinner and going home to get some work done. Managed to get to bed at 2am which wasn’t going to result in a good night’s sleep. Still as long as the podcasting session the next day didn’t go on too late…

We headed over to Oakwood McDonald’s for dinner this evening.

As I pulled in I found a BMW parked across the pedestrian crossing which then started to reverse and almost went straight into me. I presumed he was just picking someone up and was about to leave so I thought nothing of it.

However as we walked back round we saw the guy in the car talking to some youths and hand them a small bag of something.

We headed inside and having been asked what I wanted I replied, “you know, there is someone selling drugs outside.” The shift manager then disappears off and doesn’t return for 10 minutes. I went out to see if something bad had actually happened – no sign of the shift manager but the car was still sat there and greeted me with a

what the fuck you looking at?

Luckily, having gone back inside the shift manager re-appeared 5 minutes later so I don’t really know what happened there. Maybe he actually did get killed and replaced with some kind of evil clone. Who knows. The important thing is I didn’t get stabbed, which I think is a line I’m going to end most of my stories on from now on ;).

The chances are that most if not all of my friends (well technically they aren’t friends, they are colleagues as they are outside the circle) from work are never going to read this blog post. Never the less, I would like to say thanks for this weekend. It’s been amazing.

Having got out at a very reasonable time on Saturday night we settled down on the benches outside for a beer and sat around chatting for a while before heading off to Cass for a sandwhich. It was so like old times. It’s something that has really been missing from the night shift but very gradually, we’re bringing it back.

Sunday night we headed down to the pub quiz to spend our winnings from last week. We didn’t fair quite so well in the quiz this week though we did manage a rather impressive turn-out. We soon found our way to drive-thru and then by a series of interesting events, the car park at Tesco Garforth where we had spent countless nights over the years. Maybe my youth hasn’t quite slipped away just yet.

I went out on Friday for John’s birthday at which there was also in attenance quite a few people I knew from high school. Sometimes you really don’t appreciate your life and what you have achieved until you meet up with your former peers and compare. There is just something nice about being able to take a deep breath and think to yourself, “I am such a better human being than you.” Good times :D.

Apparently.

I got a letter through last week from my insurance company telling me “it has been suggested you were involved in an incidient.”

I mean, what the is that supposed to mean? Several phone calls later and I am told that it was reported to them by another insurance company but all the details about the incident were blank. I told them to close the claim because I had no knowledge of it or indeed any kind of accident and they said they would sort it out and phone me back.

They didn’t phone me back.

So I phoned them once more today and they told me they didn’t really know what was going on with it so I explained it to them again and apparently they are going to sort it. Hmmm.

It’s not even 10am yet and I am awake and watching Doctor Who. I’m not like out of bed or anything, but I’m fully awake and able to blog and everything.

Personally, I don’t think this is a good thing. I’m getting far too old when I’m awake at 10am. You would think being awake so early would give me more time and yet, we’re half way through August and I’ve only just started on series 2 of Doctor Who. Summer is running out…

Short tags. My one victory of the night.

It’s been one of those days.

I got my new equipment delivered today in preparation for the podcast. The mic stands are, well, awful. They are way too big. Still I’m sure I can look beyond that if only Behringer had got back to me in terms of configuring my mixing deck so sound comes out. I haven’t got that far yet so I’m now sitting on lots and lots of very expensive equipment that I can’t get to work and we start recording the show in just over a week.

A-Soc. I had to redo the artwork for the membership cards because everyone prints different “standard size” business cards apparently. I don’t know if my artwork has sent because all my SMTP servers sent my email then told me it had rejected it. And I can’t order the hoodies because people aren’t answering their phones after they haven’t responded to my emails. I can’t test the A-Soc website locally because the MySQL server keeps rejecting my connections.

Finance. I’ve had £170 go missing out of my account which means I have had to cancel my card so now at some point I need to go home and get my new card and no doubt spend time on the phone activating it too as well as going through the fraud procedures.

Web. My web host isn’t returning my emails with regards to the fact they have lost my database. I still can’t commit all of my files to the SVN for House Metrics but the one victory I have had tonight is short tags. Having finally got everything running, anything without a full

…but everyone from Birmingham is bad news.

I got into my car to go to work and sat fiddling with my MP3 player, stationary at the side of the road when a taxi comes past and a crashes into me!

But what really tops it off is his excuse for why he drove into me.

I’m from Birmingham, I don’t know where I’m going

How about, not into other cars. That would be a sensible start, wouldn’t it?

Luckily my car was for the most part fine other than some scuffing on the bumper. Seriously though, how much of an idiot do you have to be to drive into a parked car?

You’re probably reading this on Facebook or Netvibes.

Therefore it probably has slipped your attention that my homepage has a completely new look. Having managed to fix the site and looking for a new style to give the podcast mini site I decided that it would be better to just come up with a whole new look for everything and use that across the site.

And, for the first time, my blog has a separate skin which matches the main site as well! Finally, that integrated look which I know Kieran has been suggesting for so many years ;). So, give me your feedback, what do you think, does it work in your browser, have you found any problems?

You may notice once you start playing around that the image at the top keeps changing. At the moment there are only 6 that it “randomly” selects out of each time (I put randomly in quotes because most of us know how bad computers are at picking out random numbers, on saying that, humans are no better), two of them are photos – from graduation and Rationalist Week, two of them are collages of loads of different pictures of me and two are of composed of some of my favourite stock photography. As the months pass I’m hoping to add more and more until there is a sizeable library of them.