Archive for July, 2008

A few days ago I swapped round the way I sleep on my bed so that my head is now closest to the door rather than my feet. Since then, I’ve never looked back.

It works so much better this way round. Most notably because I am now at far less of an angle when watching something on my computer and I’m closer to the screen and the sound too, about twice as close which is quite an improvement.

Also it means I’m closer to be bed side table which had to go at the end of my bed and it seems to make it easier to get in and out of bed without stepping on things as well. So there you go, the best way round to sleep is actually the wrong way round.

Nothing happened.

It occured to me as I filled my basket with a mere 3 items at Co-op yesterday to and then pulled out by extra big credit limit credit card to fund the purchase that I am back in suburbia.

Having spent the last 3 years living in student accommodation it feels strange to be back in, for lack of a better term, “real” house. I mean, I have an oven! A working oven! That’s so good. It’s taken until now for me to really discover a way of heating food beyond microwaving it.

And a shower. A proper shower that doesn’t just trickle out a bit of water if you give it 5 minutes. It doesn’t actually output hot water but at least it outputs mildly warm water with a decent force.

Still, I’m not convinced the trade off is worth it. I watched TV the other day. For most of us, we simply stopped watching TV while we are at university. Unless they had TV on at the pub. Now we’re back to watching TV in our own homes. It’s all very depressing.

Not to mention the fact that all the pubs and takeaways are closing at like 11 in the evening.

Finally the distance is starting to bite. Due to so many of us being graduates, nobody other than myself has rushed out to buy a car and start boy racering it around (well, you’re missing out, having a car is suberb) so whenever we’re planning events it’s a case of, “well, how is everyone going to get here?” That’s not to say there aren’t good public transport links because there are – but it’s not quite the same as just living 15 minutes walk from each other.

If there is a moral to be gathered here it is that everyone should buy a car and then we can all go dogging on Thursday nights. Trust me, it feels less weird every time you do it ;). The other problem though is that we are off to Wendy tomorrow – but how? I mean seriously, we all want to drink because opportunities are limited these days but that means arranging some kind of travel. Not just walking down the road. And if we want to leave at different times, what then?

Not to mention the bitching that is going on about parking on the street. Silly little unimportant problems that seem to mean the world – welcome back to suburbia. Still, guess my email address makes more sense now :D.

20:57

It’s true, we have your money!

Regards,

PowerVPS Hosting

21:07

Hello,

A few minutes ago a member of our Engineering staff crafted an email to test email templates on our PBA system. This email was destined for internal use and was never meant to be sent out to our customer base.

Unfortunately, the mail template was misconfigured, and was sent to all current customers on our PBA system.

These people are responsible for keeping my entire business up and running :D.

I went down to Leeds’ Cafe Scientifique last night to check out what it was all about as it comes highly recommended by Paul. For those who haven’t heard of it, it’s basically a monthly event where you can go for a coffee/beer/etc and there is a talk and discussion on some kind of scientific topic.

It’s all very laid back, the topic of yesterday’s meeting was “psychotherapy – science or religion?” which involved a 25 minute talk, an interval so we could get another round of drinks in and then a general discussion session where people could ask queations.

The talk wasn’t bad though I wasn’t overly impressed. While most people there seemed to have a fair grounding in psychotherapy, I felt a bit lost not knowing a whole lot about it. Having said that, it was fairly glossy, which is to be expected in a 25 minute talk but I thought there could have been a lot more complex detail for some of us to try and get our head round if we so wished to try.

It was all very middle class though the age range wasn’t too bad, there were plenty of “young” people there (people aged below 40 shall we say). It is hosted by 7Arts in Chapel Allerton which is a lovely new building that, I noted, would make an excellent venue for a fledgling Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster that needed to hire a venue until his noodliness blessed us with huge amounts of finances.

It occurs to me, as of last Friday, I’ve now been blogging 4 years.

Over that time I’ve clocked up a total of 1,328 posts. That works out as a little under one post per day (4 years is 1460 days). Looks like my posting average is slipping :p.

Camping having been cancelled, it was down to Chris the wonder kid to throw together some kind of A-Soc event to ensure we did something over the weekend. So, us now having a dining room and all we throw together a dinner party for those of us that were still around over summer.

In the end it turned out rather well – we managed a full seven courses as well as offering people a choice with several courses and best of all, nobody died. Nobody at all. There was a turn up for the books indeed. So given I haven’t really cooked for like a year or two now, I’m going to chalk it down as a victory.

It also presented some interesting experiences. I gave the port a try, which I didn’t find very drinkable but there you go, it wasn’t particuarly good port anyway, and some of Norm’s fancy Brazilian coffee which I did manage to stomach. I think that is a sign of me getting old. But should be good for all nighters I guess. Not that anyone is going to be pulling out a cafetiere during such times.

Despite things having been slowly coming to an end for months now, it really started to bite home that we have graduated and university is over.

That’s huge. It’s been like my entire life for the past 3 years. I can barely remember life before university now and suddently it’s all been taken away. The last 3 years have been the best years of my life and I’m sure other people feel similar, Kieran said the same to me yesterday and could possibly be the best 3 years of my life that I’m ever going to have.

I mean, how many people are we going to lose contact with now? It’s a lot. Let’s not kid ourselves. Most people we’re never going to see again. How many of the people I currently consider close friends and I going to know in 10-20 years? How do you really know when you have made a friendship strong enough to stand the test of time?

Furthermore I no longer have university to hide behind. There is no, “well I’m finishing my degree before I make something off my life.” The wall has come down, now I’m just undefensibly failing to do anything with my life, to chase my dreams and achieve my goals.

I don’t think it helps that with it being summer, lots of people who would otherwise be around have gone back home or on holiday but Leeds feels so empty. I’ve gone from living with 6 other people, near the city and campus where all my friends live to living with 2 other people with everyone living miles away from each other.

Still, not everything has changed. I’m still broke. My pre-tax income has tripled but I’m still broke. I’m still working every day (though I did rather enjoy my weekend off this weekend). I’m still not used to mornings. It’s good to know there are some things you can rely on to be constant in your life.

Anyone else having a similar experience? Open up, share…

The idea of intellectual arrogance is something that gets thrown around a lot in theological debates. Recently though I’ve really noticed in branching into other areas of discourse. There is something nice about being humble enough to admit when you’re wrong but some people will insist to the end of the Earth that they are right.

This came up recently when it was pointed out to me by 6Music’s George Lamb that nobody knows the difference between a sheep and a goat.

For example, sheep have wool. But if you shave a sheep it doesn’t. Goats have horns. But then again sheep can have horns. They have an almost idential facial and body structure, at least close enough that you couldn’t tell if it was simply a different species of sheep or goat or whether it was indeed actually a whole different type of animal. The more you think about it, the more you realise that you cannot infact tell the difference between a sheep and a goat.

Having raised the issue with several people since however I’ve found that most people simply outright refuse to consider the possibility that they can’t tell the difference. Arguments like “well I could just tell” get thrown around a lot – anyone for a “well I just know god is there” argument?

Really, I don’t see what the big deal is about the fact you can’t tell the difference between a sheep and a goat. It doesn’t make you any less of a person because nobody can tell the difference. That’s just facts, animal facts.

So Wednesday was graduation. I want to talk a little more about the general concept later but for now I thought I would offer a run down of what happened as it’s certainly an experience even if it is one that you can happily live without.

Heading out from home we took no less than 4 cars down there and somehow managed to stay together as a convoy which is quite an achievement in Leeds given there is so much traffic, lights and junctions. We even made it out too despite them locking the car park barrier and forcing myself and Kieran to drive over the grassy embankment designed to keep cars out which was rather wet and muddy. Go Astra.

The experience of picking up our gown was an experience in itself, not only do they provide you with one but they also having a robing room where they dress you in it.

The ceremony itself was your standard pompous and boring event. The vice chancellor opened procedings with a speech and then the degrees were presented and we filed up to the stage one by one to collect them.

Later in the day our head of school, Roger Boyle was to say to Kieran

You know, someone told the Vice Chancellor they were going to do drugs

Or at least something to that affect. He also added, “I hope it wasn’t one of our lot.”

Wishful thinking Roger. I mean seriously, who do you think it was? Just, and this is a purely off the cuff suggestion, the same kind of person that would put a lolcat in their FYP ;).

Ok, let me explain a bit more. I arrived on stage and shook the Vice Chancellor’s hand. He then asked me “so, what’s next in your life?” I could have explained to him my plans for my start up, my extensive vision of conquering the business world, finding love and founding the Chris Worfolk Foundation to solve the world’s problems, or even the fact that I’ve already moved on to the next stage and am now happily working in a job.

But he didn’t have time to hear all that. And right now all I could think about was the amount of caffeine and alcohol I was planning to consume when I finally get some time to celebrate (or in my case, commiserate) my graduation. So I gave him the short snappy answer he was looking for – drugs.

Anyway, afterwards we stopped by the school for some of Kieran and Norm’s hard brewed GLPale which went down an absolute storm and then headed off to Loch Fyne in town for a celebratory dinner. Taking no less than 29 people I was rather pleased with the amount of people I managed to get down there, though Graham is also owed just as much credit.

I was less than impressed with the food to be honest and it didn’t help that I felt rather ill during the meal but everyone else fully enjoyed the meal and once I got round and talking to people I felt much better. We also met Rachael, the new Ms Wharton who seems very friendly and outgoing – but I’m sure they make a good match none the less :P.

Finally we finished up with a few drinks in The Terrace and then headed home. I can’t say I particuarly enjoyed it but I’m glad my parents did, mainly because I made them pay for most of it and having spent most of the day with Kieran I could see he enjoyed it which I was glad of (even if I could physically feel the smug radiating off him and burning my skin) as it really was well earned on everyone’s part.