Archive for April, 2006

I had a job interview at William Hill today. I think it went pretty well, the guy that did it seemed quite a cheery guy and we had a laugh and I had no problems with the maths test thing. The structured interview was a little weird, maybe I went through it too fast but I gave an answer to every question without needing to come back to any at the end so I think I must have given a decent answer to each one.

I don’t know if I’ve actually got the job yet but that is because they don’t. As I don’t start until June he’s keeping me on file until nearer the date so that they can see what vacanies they have then.

The debate as to whether Jesus actually existed is not a particuarly headed one because most secularists would either say Jesus probably did exist or say there isn’t much evidence pointing either way, at least, few would refute the claim, or at least not push the point as much as they would push other points about religion, that he did indeed exist.

Personally I hadn’t really given it much thought. My view was that someone named Jesus probably did exist, saying that in no way indicates that the claims of him being the son of God should be given any more creedence because there will have been lots of people called Jesus around at that time.

I almost took it as a given that there was evidence outside of the Bible to support his existence which would be hard to dispute. After all, most Christians I had debated with would push that idea. However I recently Googled Jesus outside the Bible and I was quite interested to find that none of the first page of results could actually provide any source that could really offer any reliable account.

The earliest source outside the Bible to mention Jesus, a man named Josephus, wasn’t even born until 4 years after Jesus had been crucified. He never bet Jesus, he isn’t an eyewitness to anything that happened and only talks about a man named Jesus in a historical sense.

Indeed, there appears to be no first hand accounts of Jesus, no writings by eye witnesses to any of his deeds nor Roman records of his existence. While I don’t think this disproves the existence of Jesus, I think it certainly does significant damage to the claims that he was able to perform miracles, raise from the dead or indeed do anything that someone who is not the son of God could not.

Just saw an advert on Sky One. Ricky Gervais…

Watch me on The Simpson on Sky One. Or on Channel 4 if you wait 3 years.

Cat fight :p.

Ah, Mental Mondays at Bondi, what a night. Fonze invited Claire who then invited Sarann who then invited Liz, John (also know as other John to save confusion between her housemate and my pre-uni friend John), George, Maths Chris so when you add that to me, Fonze and John there were a total of 9 of us there.

Myself, Fonze and John got the bus down at 9:50, which is 30 minutes earlier than normal as Sarann suspected it would be busier being Easter Monday. I think the claims were unfounded, it was about as busy as it was last week, maybe a little busier but that can be accounted for by students returning a week before term starts, perhaps to finish a project (that’s what Sarann did anyway).

I know a few people recognised me, if only at least from previous weeks. When our IDs were getting checked by one of the bouncers, the other one (who I now know is named Andrew) said “let them in, they come every week” or something to that effect. It’s great the way we’ve become regulars at Bondi :D. Most people do it with a pub. But not me and Fonze, we had to be different :p.

Fonze made it his mission to find out people’s names. The first being that the bouncer that recognised us was called Andrew and he also found out the names of the two girls that serve drinks at the bathtubs. The blonde is called Emma and the darked haired one is Mandy (she is the one Fonze thought was checking me out (or laughing at me), she denies she was doing either). He just went up and asked them – if only he had that kind of confidence when trying to huck up with girls.

I spent most of the night in the group or outside it casting my eye around. We were the first people to hit the revolving dance floor. Indeed, for 5-10 minutes, myself, Claire and Other John were the only people on it :D. But that was before 11 when most people were waiting for the free drinks to start. They didn’t open the downstairs till like 10 to 11 which sucked as we got there at like 10:15 and I was hoping we could get some revolving dancing in before the drinking started. Not that we didn’t get plenty in at the start.

I ended up spending the last hour or two dancing with a girl named Laura and a bunch of guys who kept calling me Jesus. That was fun :p. I wonder how regularly she goes there. Fonze says he is almost broke again, especially with buying his phone so he won’t be attending next week although it will be the first Monday back at uni so I’m hoping I can drag my house down there. Early as next week the queues return and it will be packed again. Still only 8 weeks of term before all the students leave for the summer and Bondi is once again returned to the student/locals hybrid (there are locals too but there are plenty of us that are students also which is cool).

Speaking of student/local hybrids, Colette was there! Not that we talked much, we had a quick conversation inside and I went and said goodbye to her when we were outside waiting for a taxi, but it was nice to see her.

So yeah, fun night, roll on Wendy House! Although to be honest, now that I have spent 3 weeks at home, I’m settled in. I spent the first 2-3 weeks wishing I was back at uni with all my uni friends but now I am home and have been home for several weeks I am settled in again and I like home. Still, I am sure once I get back to uni it will be fun. But then I’ll have to do work and such. After going on 4 weeks of doing nothing, even the limited amount of work I do at uni seems a lot :p.

Oh and as a footnote, Bondi was open until 3:30 today rather than the usual 3. That was cool as I was enjoying myself more at the end. They claim they do that more often but I don’t think I’ve been there when it’s been open until 3:30 before. Ah well, it was a good thing so I’m not complaining.

Have a read of this. It’s the transcript from the hi-jacked flight 93 in which the passengers thought back and forced the terrorists to crash the plane before it reached it’s destination. One name keeps popping up in it. Can you guess which it is?

It’s rare that someone gets their first phone these days (except in the case of kids but then even they usually have one by 12 these days, it’s crazy). So when the situation comes along you have to take advantage of the opportunity. Think back, how long did it take you to learn your own number? Took me a while. To which end…

David Smith: oh yer do you have johns number
Chris: 12345678912
David Smith: there added
Chris: Sorted (y). Although you’ve actually just added your own number :p.

Obviously, I’ve changed Fonze’s number so that it’s not available to everyone who reads my blog, or indeed, really to anyone who has access to the internet. But it was his actual number on when I gave him it. It’s quite an amusing joke to pull plus if they try to ring it, it’s not like they are going to get some stranger as I thought that would be crossing the line (I like to think I’m amusing but fair).

Why is everything we buy today a big file of s***? Surely there must be some manufacturer of an electronic product out there that is capable of building something that will last more than a month. A one year warrenty is a joke as you can’t afford to replace every single piece of electronic equipment you own every year and yet most of the electronic products you get these days don’t even last that.

My phone is now in even deeper problems. I only got it last summer and the little joystick in the middle of it is already stopping functioning properly. Now the batter cover isn’t going on right anymore. It’s just unbelievable how low quality these things are, especially for something A) I paid over £100 for and B) made by Sony. If this is Sony’s product, what the hell is everything else going to be like? Falling apart in my hands? That is bascially what my laptop did.

My MP3 player is all but unusable, my digital camera has been back for repairs, my DVD player has too, my personal CD player that I had before my MP3 player (which I paid £100 for, I went for a good good one is a lost cause, one of the ports on my router just randomly died, I’ve gone through a million guitar leads even though I don’t play it that much, the buttons on my camcorder barely respond and the batteries now last about 25% of the time they should do (which still beats the 90 second I get out of my laptop – yes, 90 seconds!). The list of poor quality electronics goes on and on. It’s almost enough to make you give up and reject technology.

There are three new computers I want to buy. Not that I am going to do at the moment as I’m completely broke and can barely afford to live let alone buy new computers. But hypothetically there are three on my list. Two have been on for a while – a storage server and a Linux test server. But I’m adding a third one to my list now, a replacement laptop.

My current one sucks. You can’t take it anywhere as the battery life is 90 seconds, it gets way too hot and often over heats and turns off, you don’t even what to type on it because of the heat coming off it, plus it’s falling apart, the battery compartment hangs off the bottom because where it locks into place it was broken. Having a laptop wasn’t as cool as I dreamed of before I got it but make no mistake it was VERY cool and now it would be even cooler as my home is wireless so I literally could listen to all my music (which is stored on my desktop) and surf the internet without any wires. Something I couldn’t do even when my current laptop’s battery worked as A) my music was on my external hard drive as I couldn’t fit it on my laptop’s hard drive and B) I didn’t have a wireless network.

The decision to add it to my wishlist came about because my parents have gone on holiday and run off with the TV. So I generally listen to music when I’m cooking. But my current CDs are boring and I don’t have any new blank ones because I ran out and don’t want to spend any money buying new ones. Plus it’s such a hassle to burn them aswell and a waste of money if you are hardly ever going to listen to them. So what I wanted was a laptop I could just take down to the kitchen, wirelessly connect to my network and access all my music.

Although I’ve been toying with the idea of adding one to my wishlist for some time as it would be great to have one I could take out when I needed (with all the problems of my current laptop it simply isn’t worth doing at the moment, especially with me needing to find a power supply and indeed taking my power adapter adds significant weight) and just be able to take round the house. Also as I use my laptop for emails, storing my documents and such (so that if I do go say on holiday or away for a day and need access to my important stuff, I can in theory take my laptop) I want something that boots up really fast, or at least as fast as my desktop so that I can edit things as I do on my desktop over the network. Although if I had a laptop that didn’t take ages to load any program and didn’t burn you’re hands when you touched it I would start editing on my laptop again.

While I was never a mega light weight, obviously uni will have turned me into more of a heavy weight. Although not as much as a lot of people I guess as I drink bottles, but then again, so do a lot of students.

I was looking back through my phone and came across my two drinks lists from the first two Otley runs I did late last year. I did one on a Thursday night with Grant House then did another on the Saturday with Comp Soc. Quite an intense few days as I think I went to Fruity in between then too :D.

Thursday’s list…

1. Reef
2. Baileys
3. Vodka and coke
4. Apple corky shot
5. WKD Blue
6. Half a martini lemonade
7. Vodka and coke

Saturday’s list…

1. Vodka coke
2. WKD Blue
3. Half a pint of Strongbow
4. Reef
5. Coke
6. Vodka lemonaide
7. Terkila
8. Smirnoff Ice
9. Coke

You can see I was wasted by the Saturday from the past few days as I was on coke breaks every now and then :D. I don’t think those were too bad given that I only really started drinking in quantity since I started uni and this was like a month after I first arrived there. These days though I would do that kind of quantity at Bondi in two or three hours. That said, I was trying to mix my drinks to get into the Otley run attitude whereas at Bondi I just drink bottles. I don’t know if that makes a difference or not.

I don’t think there has been a massive change. Some change yeah but it doesn’t take that much more to get me drunk than it did back then.

Does Easter Sunday have any real significance? My understanding is that it doesn’t, it’s just the closed Sunday to both Good Friday and Easter Monday which do have real significance. Interestingly enough, Jews are currently celebrating Passover. It’s convienient the way religions schedule their holidays and celebrations at the same time.

I managed to get up at around 10 today which isn’t too bad. Later than I was planning on but then I did end up watching the first half of the Family Guy movie so I didn’t get to bed until maybe 1, possibly a little later, add 9 hours sleep to that and 10 is the time I should be getting up. I got up to find Michelle had been chatting to me for half an hour while I was asleep. It’s always nice to have something you read when you first get up.

I got thinking about what I could do today to make this a productive day and I came to the conclusion that I wasn’t really sure. I could work on specific projects but then I would have to work out what projects I actually have going at the moment :D. Ok, number one task, contact PowerVPS about my stats problem. I’m going to do that right now actually…

…ok that is a job well done, just have to wait for them to get back to me now. Cleaning up my desktops would be quite a useful job too do. To a lesser extend, my room too. Oh and more than anything my email backlog. And backup my new music that hasn’t been backed up yet. And some other backups would be useful. Also practising starting sentences without and and ;).

I think I may write my list retrospectively, that will make it easier and mean that I won’t have failed to achieve anything :D.