Watching and waiting...

21:02 - σ minus 38 minutes

I press the refresh button for the hundredth time, and relax as the updated number of bids stays at 1. But it's quiet, as they say. Too quiet.
Crappy and trite cliches aside, every now and again, ebay throws me a bone and gives me something I really want for much much less than it's worth. This happens only very rarely, admittedly, so it's pretty special when it does occur. And today, we have a Sigma 55-200mm AF Lens up for grabs. Current price is, let me see...
...99p.

Market value is between £80 and £125 depending on where you go.

Something is very wrong. Either I've missed the "this isn't really a lens" small print or no one actually wants this lens. With 39 minutes to go, this £125 lens is going for 99p, and despite the fact that all I can do if someone bids on it is to bid higher still, I'm watching it like a hawk, if only to convincce myself that I'm doing all I can to make it mine.

Interestingly enough, I'm not now going to "watch and wait" and edit this blog later, updating it every few hours like I did with some of my others, no. I'm going to keep this on my screen nice and secure, unpublished, until the auction is finished. Why? Because it would be a terrible cruel irony if someone read this and thought "hey a cheap lens on ebay!" and outbid me.

Not that that'd happen, but terrible irony is something life does well to me, so I'm keeping this here anyway :).

21:38 - σ minus 2 minutes

A last minute bidding frenzy has brought the price up to £10.51, a bit of a shock after 99p, but still ridiculously cheap for a lens...

21:43 - σ plus 3 minutes

Seems someone had the same idea as me. The price shot up from £10.51 to £26.00 before I won the lens. The bidding service that I have just been introduced to, EZsniper, performed admirably, winning both my test purchase (a 55mm circular polariser filter) and the lens without any intervention from me after the parameters had been set.
The software works pretty well. Put in the maximum amount of money you're willing to pay for an auction item, and the item number, and that's it.
Seriously (or "srsly" as the cats say).
Rather than putting down an early bid on an item and announcing to the world in a slurred idiotic voice "iiiiii waaaannnt thiiiiis iiiteeem tooooo" and therefore giving them the opportunity to totally blow your bids out of the water by outbidding you, forcing the item cost through the roof in the process, EZsniper witholds your bid until the very last minute, waiting quietly before springing into action at the very last second, placing your maximum bid seconds before the auction is due to close. If you've bid the highest, you've won the item. If you haven't, you don't have time to revise it or place a higher one. But, the beauty of bidding in the last few seconds, is that if you do place the highest bid, no other user has time to revise their bid either.
EZsniper isn't a free service, but it could be argued that it's worth it for the money it saves you, by removing the need to have to slog through hours of incremental bid, bidding, bidding higher, bidding higher still...

So what else have I been up to? Well, quite a lot really. Work has totally shot to hell to the point where it's become intolerable. But hey, rumour has it that the business is going down the tube soon anyway, so it seems that this situation will take care of itself.

Family has been a lot better. We decided to get together for a Barbecue, which was kinda cool :).
I woke up in mid afternoon on the day of the barbecue and looked outside - glorious sunshine, but no car outside. I walked through the house - no nephew, and no one else in. Bugger, they'd gone without me!!
I got my leathers on and got the bike fired up, had a nice ride over to my sister's house. Hmm, no missing parent's car there either.
Still, I managed to get parked up and say hi to my sis who was in fact in, and it seems that the family had left to do some shopping - without telling anyone.
Eventually though, my brother and his fiancee turn up, followed later by my parents and nephew, and we had a good old time.

We had the usual barbecue food - very clever temperature sensitive "readiburgers". Yes, apparently they're designed to shrink in size so that when they reach half their original diameter, you know they're thoroughly cooked. That must be it right? This has to be some clever marketing invention and not part of the folly of cooking frozen burgers?? Just imagine if you put a 12 inch pizza in the oven and 20 minutes later took out a 6 inch pizza. It's daft!

But we did have copious quantities of soft drinks, which served to keep us cool, and served to make my nephew a hyper loony, but a good day was had by all :).

I got a new phone as well - I was going to get an iphone but it seemed that my sister wanted it, and since my sister and I haven't argued for maybe 8 years, I didn't think it was worth falling out over a cellphone, no matter how sparkly the iphone was.

So I've got myself one of those LG chocolate thingies. One friend complaint it is a little effeminate for a mobile phone, but hey, it's a cellphone not a knuckle duster. It does the job nicely enough, it was pretty damn inexpensive, and it's got enough novelty value to keep me interested. It will even let me read my emails on the move, or it would if I could configure the damn thing properly.
But, it's not the only thing I've bought recently, no. Some new camera gear arrived. a Light tent and a cool remote control shutter thing. My room is swiftly turning into an aladdins cave for any photographer.
The light tent in particular is a clever piece of kit. Basically, it's a metal framed nylon cube. Put object inside, photograph object, and straight away you get rid of dodgy reflections .
Not that I wander around in the nip with my camera swinging from my... ...neck.


But hey, everything has its downside, and the problem with the light tent, photo tent, light cube, whatever the hell people call it, is that it comes in a bag about the size of a dinner plate (12 inches) across. Now obviously <---- that isn't dinner plate sized, no. You have to fold it into shape, which is NOT AN EASY THING to do until you get the hang of it, which I haven't done. You have to arse about, sprain your wrists, send nearby glass objects hurtling to oblivion and dent any nearby walls, trying to collapse the thing - which doesn't disassemble - small enough to fit back in the bag. But hey, it brings a grin to my easily amused mug when I manage it first time. Which is primarily why I don't smile a lot. In other news, I decided to clean my rather battered and dinted (yes, I replaced the case and yes it has since become battered and dinted so I need to do it again) , and I decided it needed some serious attention, so out came the autosol.

Don't use autosol to clean anything shiny folks, not unless you want a brushed metal finish on your ipods, cellphones, whatever. Fortunately I had some purpose made "ipod scratch repair" fluid (which I suspect is actually repackaged silver/brass polish at three times the price) left over, and I managed to use a tiny little bit of the now scratch repair paste to polish the pod back up :).

It's also been a fairly busy month where photography's concerned. Nick and I went to manchester again to do a day's shooting, and we had a generally good day. Admittedly the weather couldn't make up its mind and my D200 got soaked. Before I could wipe the water off the camera though, the sun came out and it evaporated. Yes, the weather was that fickle.

(Image reduced to one-third size for upload - how's THAT for high resolution! God I love my camera!) This's the sort of weather we had while we were there. It subdued the colours, right enough, but it made for quite a lot of atmosphere, which really made up for it. It changed frequently so the camera settings were all over the place, but hey, it's fun being out there and getting behind the camera. I even shot a few genuine 35mm negatives while I was there, will be interesting to see how those come out.

So hey, I'm gonna chill out, tidy my room, drink coke, and watch a few Zero Punctuation and Ranting Monkey reviews before having an early night, and daydreaming about the sparklyness of my new lens :).

Night :).

Oh, and if any of you wondered what "σ" is, it's just a letter of the greek alphabet :). "What letter?" you ask. that's easy. It's the letter Sigma. ;)

Night.

Down the sink...

I have committed a grave, grave sin...

Picture a pint of beer, cooling in a glass. Condensation forms on the outside as the bubbles fly gently towards the surface...
The working man's refuge, the epitome of relaxation, a nice cold pint of beer.

I poured it down the sink.
The whole thing.

The golden colour dilutes with the running water while the bubbles disappear down the hole.

Why? How could I do such a cruel and callous thing?
Why, when I'm already regretting such a thoughtless act, did I do it? What could possess me to commit such a crime?

Well, I went outside to look er at the sky, at 5:10am. The birds are singing, the sky is clearing and the weather is getting warmer already. And yet, I'm not in a position to enjoy it. Why? Becuase I used to equate "quality time off" with beer, oblivious to the fact that too much beer (seven cans in this case) doesn't make a night, it spoils it. Little point listening to the dawn chorus when it's an effort not to headbutt the wall on my way inside.

Perhaps in a few weeks I will look back on this in horror and think "how the hell did i dare to pour good beer away?". I'd rather thing that I'll look back and think "fair enough".

Fun is only fun until you stop enjoying it, and when the world starts spinning, that is when the beer has outstayed its welcome, and so, it is time for us to part company, the beer going one way, my mind going the other.

I suppose I'll go and get something to eat, a rustlers burger seems a good choice.
I spose I'll drink a load of water too..
Beer isn't all it's cracked up to be, and hopefully I'll remember this :).

Well, I'm off to grab some food, merrily singing "Still alive, backwards (yah, ya likes) as I get ready for bed :)

New camera gear coming soon, and hopefully a sparkly new iPhone too :D.

Night, and for all those straight edge people - stay straight edge :).

Incredibly Tired...

...is how I'm feeling at the moment. My shins, knees, heels, elbows, shoulders and even my head - anything that normally takes a knocking - have all taken a knocking. I'm sore all over, I don't want to move, I'm ready for bed (at 21:38, abnormal for me!) and I get the feeling I'll be aching and sore tomorrow too.

I got woken up at 9am this morning having slept most of last night. My sister and my nephew had come to collect me for a day out with them, which was nice. We borrowed the sat nav, made our final preperations and off we went. Our destination? Twin Lakes adventure park in Leicestershire.
The journey was pretty uneventful, apart from when the sat nav dumped us in Melton Mowbray town center (a bloody jumbled mess of traffic lights and aggressive driving), proudly announcing as we sat at some traffic lights behind a potato transporter, that we had reached our destination.

A quick call home for a different postcode, and a little reprogramming later, and we were redirected out of the town through the countryside to where we were supposed to be.

So we got in, had a wander round, and generally got our bearings. There were a couple of small rollercoasters outside, which I steadfastly refused to go on (I don't like heights, and I don't like not-being in control of what happens to me). So my sis and nephew went on each of the coasters and then we set off up to the first building - a huge warehouse type building. We got in and had a look around, and what we saw was fantastic.

Picture a kid's indoor playcentre thing, you know, rope swings, ball pools, slides, rope bridges etc etc, you know the type.

Now make it ten times bigger, so it has four levels, one above the other. Give it five slides, the largest of which dominates the center of the thing. Above these slides, suspend five or six rope bridges at varying heights above the floor, give it everything - four or five ball pools, spinning panels in the floor, bungee rope traps (we'll return to these later), obstacles like narrow gaps to crawl through, or spinning rollers to force your way through, turn it, in short, into any playful kid's idea of heaven.

We spent two hours, crawling, climbing, sliding, dropping, vaulting, shouldering, rolling, running and hiding'n'seeking through that thing. We ran through it, around it, in it, outside it, dropping down huge slides, climbing the bridges etc etc, it was fantastic.

And the beauty of it is, that because kids have to be supervised while they're on it, it was open to all ages - a kid of seven or eight would plunge down a slide into a ball pool with a big grin and a yell, to be followed shortly by his dad in his thirties or forties, who has a big grin and a yell of his own. There were people from about 4 years to at a guess, 50 years on this thing, and every one of them was grinning like a cheshire cat, running round, having what amounted to a couple of hours of a second childhood! No sooner had we first encountered the "bungee rope trap" than a couple of lads, 17/18 maybe, fell foul of it, falling right through it and ending up suspended in varying orientations above the ground, held according to one of the pair, by some very uncomfortable parts. Further information (on the trap, not his parts) here:

The Bungee Rope Trap

The various levels of the "center" are connected by several features, be they rope bridges, slides, cargo nets or simple stairs. One such feature is what has been dubbed "The Bungee Rope Trap".

With the distance from the floor matting of one floor to that of the floor above it being approx 8 or 9 feet (close to 3 metres) and parts of each floor being approx the same span in width, a cube is defined in which there is a gap in the ceiling above the second floor, with the floor matting of the second floor being the base of the cube and the [gap in the] floor of the fourth floor being its top.

This gap is not completely empty however, at two foot intervals are strung a net of bungee ropes , crossing horizontally from one side of the cube to the other, parallell to the floor. There are four such "nets", one above the other. These nets are strong enough to arrest any fall through them, and strong enough to entangle the falling individual. They are however, too elastic to be used as climbing aids or to bear any weight individually. As such, once an individual falls through the "trap" from top to bottom, they will usually become entangled, partially falling through some of the nets before being stopped by those below them. The individual will usually find themselves upside down, the body being heavier than the legs, tangled by the legs, ankles etc, and will usually find that as they cannot use the ropes to pull themselves upright again, escape is difficult.

Climbers will also attempt to climb from the base of the cube to its top - This is extremely difficult to the point that almost everyone who attempts it ends up in the situation described above, or gives up the attempt.

I fell foul of it, ending up dangling by my ankle, held above the ground, and only with some help was I able to get myself out of the situation. I couldn't untangle my ankle as my head and arms were seperated from it by one of the nets.
Still, at least I didn't get a quantity of bungee cord holding me off the floor by my nuts, though I did get giggled at by a couple of people on the third floor, directly in front of whom i was helplessly suspended upside down.

We ran ourselves ragged, I sweated buckets, you could literally feel the heat emnating from me, and my t-shirt was soaked, if only because I'd kept wiping my face with it.

So we went outside for a bit to chill out, and wound up looking through the little animal section. Friendly goats came up to demand food, a turkey wandered up to us, made a few strange noises, and wandered off again. A peacock preened itself in the rafters of one of the buildings and a donkey wandered up to the front of its enclosure for some attention.

The mice regarded us with goggly eyes and twitchy whiskers, the llamas stared at us in that stately disinterested but judgemental way that llamas seem to, and the chicks ran about hectically. It was great to see so many different types of animals.

Still, my sister and nephew managed to talk me into going on the coasters. One of them I ended up going on twice, which was cool. We also had a wander round and spent a little time on a nice outdoor thing with a few slides and suchlike.

We went to one of the other "areas" in a seperate building - this one was on three levels, and was like a compressed air version of laserquest. Tennis ball sized foam balls were the ammo, and on every level were banks of compressed air guns that fired these balls a reasonable distance. To keep the ammo on each level topped up, people on the ground floor would load a huge mortar with loads of balls and fire them into all the floors at once. A fountain type thing on the other side of the ground level did a similar thing, throwing out waves of balls to all the "players". Course my nephew didn't like the noise of the compressed air and left earlier, with me in tow. But not before I used "my" gun to bounce a ball off the head of a woman at the mortar, two floors below! Haha!

We had some food before going to the next attraction, a nice pirate themed boat ride thing. You sit down a few people to a raft and get propelled around a little circuit by the water current. On your way you see all sorts of things like a guy walking the plank, lots of treasure, a smuggler's cave, and two other creatures that I swear looked like (fake) dead cats. Bizarre, but nice.

We then went on a pedalo for a while, with me ending up going the wrong way round the course (no one was bothered), bringing along my sister and nephew in the back of the boat, for the ride. It was a nice relaxing (for them - it was exhausting for me!) ride though.

Back on dry land, after some time playing on the zip lines there, we went back to the adventure complex centre thingie, and spent another two hours climbing and sliding etc. We left thoroughly exhausted, and completely satisfied. A fantastic day out really, and at only £10 for admission (all rides and events are free), I'd recommend it to anyone who wants to be a kid again for a day.

Well, I know it kinda petered out towards the end, but I want to concentrate on being tired so, there you go. Have fun - you will if you go :).

Yes, this one

I get home, I strip out of the stuffy formal shirt, tie and suit that I have on and change into my familiar t-shirt and trackies. Ahh, that's better.
Where have I been? I've just got back from the best photo session I've had so far.

My work have this do once a year, a summer ball as they prefer to call it. All the gents and ladies turn up at this posh place dressed in their best formal wear. The girls wear dresses and ball gowns, the guys wear suits, shirts and ties.

I kinda got hoodwinked into the whole idea. I had no intention of attending before tuesday, when my mate said "I've been talking to Andy, he'll do the photography for you". Of course, he hadn't, and it was the first I heard.
I'd steered clear of the whole social formal function. Ties, jackets, champagne? I do most of my drinking on public property for feck's sake, and all of a sudden I need to wear a suit and drink champagne?

Still as the days went past, it got better. I wouldn't be charged (£30 plus drinks) for my ticket or meal, I'd get in free as long as I did the photography.

So I got my stuff ready, got my shoes polished etc etc.

Today I got home, got my camera gear prepped, got my smart clothes on, and got out there.
We got there and after a boring time of waiting, I finally got set up in the right place. I started taking casuals, we started from there

And the night went on.
(this is ridiculous. I'm sat here surrounded by camera equipment in my casual t shirt, boxers, and my formal cotton socks or whatever they are looking like a damn fking idiot. I'll be back when I'm done listening to this tune. *big girls you are beautiful*....)

So.
I had a really cool time taking photos, you know, the official photographer for the entire event out of over 200 people. I strutted around like a red breasted f'king cockerel or whatever the term is, you know, a guy who isn't a showoff but who doesn't need to show off to be damn good :D.

I took over 160 photos this night, the official photographer for an event that included an award ceremony, a formal meal, a disco and a champagne reception. Did I drink champagne? yes I did. Is it good? No. It's like fizzy dry wine. It's only good trait is that it gets you drunk. Which was a bad trait seeing as how I needed to take lots of hi quality photos.

I had minestrone soup which was cool. It was followed by chicken in some kinda mushroom sauce. I grabbed a forkful of what I figured was spaghetti and shoved it into my mouth, where they turned out to be shittake mushrooms, which was cool. Chewy and vaguely unpleasant, but cool.
Obviously then I took the strawberries with the single mint leaf, the icing sugar, the cream and the raspberry coulis.
Well, I did when I wasn't busy taking photos.

Seriously though, I'm pleased with tonight. At work I'd always been a kinda grey face. I get on with it, get lost in the crowd etc etc. Here, and a fair few people will back me up on this. I came into my own. As Terry Pratchett said, being behind a camera gives you the moral authority to order any bunch of idiots about "you want to look good in this photo don't you?" - it's for their own good, right?

Tonight has been a resounding success. I made a few friends, impressed a lot of people including my boss's boss's boss, who took time out in the award ceremony to thank me for being there, to credit me for giving up my time, to the applause of 200 people. A good feeling. I think I managed to appear modest.

I'm really pleased with tonight. Admittedly I drank more than I should have, but not enough to cause me problems. I impressed a lot of people, and, AND, I did some of my best work.
Yes. Senior employee X and senior employee Y are now officially engaged, and I was able to take a photo of them. Yeah whatever.

Picture it though. An old historical building, light streaming through the windows illuminates the bubbles in their champagne glasses, their arms around each other, beaming smiles on their face.

Doesn't sound like a lot, I spose you had to be there. But it is some of my best work.

So yeah, now I'm off to clear my room, to clear my head, and to try and get myself ready for tomorrow's work shift.
As for the photo of the happy couple, well that's gonna be a wedding present. I think it will be nice.

But yeah, a damn good night.

MOT Trouble

Well, I'm stood on our drive, the clouds, once scattered and few have got together for a party and seem to be filling the sky, and I think I know why: Because today is my MOT (annual vehicle safety/roadworthiness inspection) day.

Yep, after some work on the bike, I've sorted out a couple of problems, and I'm on my way to fix a couple more. Even as I speak, parrafin is dripping off my drive chain, taking with it that nasty muck and crap that seems to get all over the thing every time I take it out. I've already fixed the squeaking brakes, the dodgy idle, and one of the bar ends, but I can't help but feel that he's gonna come up with something to fail me on.

Still, it'll be nice to ride the bike either way, so there's that to look forward to, let's just hope that I can continue riding it once I've taken it there. Well, I'm off for a cup of coffee etc, will keep you updated.

14:02: Well, that was bizarre. I popped in to get a tool a while ago, with the clouds hanging ominously in the sky. I was inside for about 2 minutes, and when I came out, I swear there was almost not a cloud to be seen -the sun was absolutely beaming down.

The clouds are back with a vengeance now though, but I'm nearly ready to go. I'm due up the MOT station in about 55 minutes, and I have to admit, not only have I not been on the bike for a while, but I haven't had an mot for 12 months either. I've not been this nervous since tuesday when I went into hospital.

Still, let's see how we go, eh? :).

14:10: And the rain has started - only light at the mo but those clouds are very dark grey :(.

14:15 - that didn't take long, the light spotting has turned into a downpour, complete with the first thunder of the year!! I swear the world revolves around me, as soon as I plan to go out, the heavens themselves move in response! :(.

Still, I've ridden through worse, but I haven't ridden for a long time!

14:39 - Well the thunder and rain have gone and the roads are drying out - it's time for me to go now, and I admit, I'm incredibly nervous. My leathers, designed to protect me and keep me safe, feel more like they're crushing me, keeping me from being able to escape - tis a weird feeling. Still best get going!

22:03 - Okay. So. The thunder carried on a while after it stopped raining, but before long the sun was out again and the roads had already begun to dry. By the time I was out on the road, the roads were damp, but patches of dry tarmac were appearing and growing as the sun returned.

Strictly speaking, I had an uneventful ride to the test center, though from my point of view it was like being a kid again, on some great adventure. The bike sounds better and feels more powerful than it used to, the roar from the airbox is awesome and makes the bike sound much meatier, with the screaming from the exhausts and the really seductive growl from under the tank, it was hard to resist breaking into a huge grin on the way there. Or it would have been hard to resist if I had tried.

While waiting for the bike to be tested, I went to the local store to grab a can of coke - getting distracted by the post office onsite, i went over to learn that I can't tax my bike there, but I can do it at the one down the road. Thanking them, I walked out of the shop to realise that one of my hands still had the can of coke in it! Red-faced, I scurried back in to pay for it and tried not to look to see if anyone had noticed my accidental shoplifting.

Finally time came for my bike to get MOT'd. It was pretty uneventful as he took it through the checks. The front brake came out okay on the rolling road, more powerful than ever since I swapped out the master cylinder with one from a Mille. The Mille's a much more powerful heavier bike, so the cylinder is designed to have greater stopping power than the little one I used to have (which some muppet previous owner swapped over from an RS125, something that weighed less and made less power!!!).
He rolled the rear wheel onto the rolling-road-brake-tester-thingy and as he applies the brake, the "brake power o-meter" or whatever it's called reads the power from the back brake.

All of a sudden, there's a metallic crack-ping, as something on my bike shatters, sending pieces of metal across the workshop floor. Behind the mechanic's foot (still on the now-very-depressed rear brake pedal), a severed brake line drips brake fluid onto my still-spinning rear wheel.

He gets off the bike and we have a closer look - the fixing that holds the steel brake line to the brake caliper, has shattered. The line has become completely detached from the caliper and it's dripping the last little bit of brake fluid onto the floor. In short, my rear brake fixing literally exploded under the pressure.
The problem was that the fixings on the line were not steel, they were aluminium. Aluminium corrodes in exactly the same way that steel does not, and when it corrodes apparently the fixings split. This one had evidently split with enough force to send bits of it everywhere.

Still, he made me up a new line, with steel fixings this time, and testing it again, my bike scored a successful pass. As opposed to a successful fail, or a non-successful pass. Whatever.

I ended up taxing my bike at the post office about 5 minutes before they were due to close, then went on a little zoom round town in the now bright and sunny weather.
All in all, a good day :).
Thanks for reading, see you soon.

Tennis and July and Strawberries and Suchlike...

Okay, so it's a nice summer evening outside, Andy Murray's doing a convincing job of beating that Richard Gasquet bloke on the TV, and apart from my dental pain (which for the first time today, due to my super-strength ibuprofen wearing off, is shooting up the side of my jaw and into my ear/temples) I'm in a pretty good mood :).

I've had a nice productive summer day, I've fixed the bike's electrics and booked the mot for thursday. I've done some more work on a couple of 3D projects, have been to the park with my nephew and generally had a nice time chilling out on my day off.

Well, looks like the two blokes have equalised, and it's a nice quiet day outside (apart from one bloke randomly letting a firework off), it's not broad daylight out, more narrow daylight, but still there are plenty of people about :).

So, what have I been up to? well, I went shopping yesterday so I could spend some money. Despite work underpaying me by about £60 because they can't decide whether I should be paid or not for my day in hospital, I still have some pennies to spend so I went and got a nice new bracelet and a couple of new t shirts. When we got back, my presence was er, requested, so my sister, nephew and I went strawberry picking at the local field, which was a lot more local than I thought it would be. I'm having some later - nothing like food you've picked yourself.

So yeah, not much to report, I'm still waiting for the ibuprofen to kick in, but I've had a pretty cool weekend, nice and laid back, which was good :). Let's see how the tennis goes.

You think Anbesol's good? Try IV Sedatives!

08:29 Okay so that title's a bit optimistic, considering it's a whole new experience that i'm not particularly looking forward to, no. Today is the day.
I'm sat here waiting for my mum/lift to finish her social visit to her old workplace, it's looking like its going to be a nice day, but I'm kinda worried that I'm not going to have the ability/opportunity to enjoy it. I've finally got to go into the dental hospital in about 90 minutes, to have the remainder of that troublesome tooth removed, and based on past experience, I'll be happy when its over.

The sun's beaming in, too much in fact, the radio's on with some police bloke explaining how shootings in the city are up but we're still all safe because the police work really hard to protect us, the car's getting uncomfortably hot and i'm trying to get this down while struggling to concentrate against the radio and the screaming schoolkids walking past, and the cars rumbling past etc, admittedly there's not really a lot to say at the moment. I've taken the usual anti-dentist precautions, my chain, my watch etc (read my older blogs if you don't know what I'm on about hehe), but I'm still not relishing the idea of coming out of the hospital all woozy and disoriented and high and stoned.

So what have I got planned for the rest of the day? Nothing much, go to hospital, get operated on, get injected with lots of drugs and stuff and then go home and sort of pass out in my bedroom, possibly on the floor. While I've still got my faculties though, I'd like to talk about something else that's kinda caught my eye.

I've noticed that any interaction between a human customer/client/self important twit and a company/provider/whatever, has turned from a simple "i want xyz product please" "that'll be xyz price, thanks". to a ridulously "customer service" based saga of "customer satisfaction" calls, buzzwords, artificial professionalism, simpering and patronising letters that don't really do much except annoy the customer, and offer them opportunities to contact the company by phoning other people who are paid - as much as they hate having to do it - to be patronising and positively dribbling with artificial enthusiasm, and I, if no one else, am sick of it.
I'm sick of "experience enrichment" and "customer satisfaction" and "service questionnaires", nuisance phone calls by my finance company every 2 months to ask me if i'm still okay because I haven't missed any payments yet.
From the other side, I'm sick of asking callers if we're allowed to ask them if they enjoyed dealing with us, despite the fact that we don't provide a service to those people. I'm sick, in short, of this "the customer is always right" crap.

And so I am proposing a new web campaign that I shall probably get someone else to consider and then forget as soon as I realise I have better things to do:
http://www.iamnotacustomeriamahumanbeing.org
Okay so the URL is a bit on the long side, but by itself it kinda explains where I stand on the issue.

Most importantly though what I want is to be treated like a person and not some kind of omniscient demigod by the poor guy in the shirt and tie who is paid to fall over himself everytime some idiot walks within a couple of aisles of him. For me, just because I'm in his store, just based on the possibility that I might buy something, that poor kid is handed targets and given training classes and taught how to behave to "maximise satisfaction". He expresses concern that this behaviour is unnatural and abnormal, "no, it's customer satisfaction" leer his bosses.
So in the name of "customer service", in the name of someone i've never met or spoken to going out of his way to check that he's met all his vigorously enforced targets at my - and his - expense, every single time I go to any shop, I've got to deal with some poor kid who's being turned into a customer service zombie, against his will, his head filled with buzzwords and Key Performance Indicators, and if i complain then a different set of protocols kick in and this poor kid and I again have to go through the same macabre ridiculous dance - if I'm reasonable, he suddenly goes into customer service overdrive "oh my god how cruel of us to expect you to pay, how can we apologise to you?". If I'm unreasonable, he goes into suicidal mode, against all common sense, against all expectations of what would constitute "normal behaviour" he starts "Objection handling".
Objection Handling, to give it two capital letters it really doesn't deserve, is management's way of pissing off the troublesome customers while simultaneously keeping them away from the people that actually make the rules, by handling such duties to the younger more inexperienced members of staff - kind of like throwing a person in front of a lion to make sure you get away unmolested. If the younguns don't like this? Tough, you're management, you pay them, they're under your heel and you can crush them with all manner of "factfinding meetings" if they object to being abused for a living.

09:05 Well, my mum's back now, so we're one step closer to going into the torture chamber.
Still, hopefully these drugs will be nice and I won't feel a thing, but I doubt it. I have to admit, writing a blog on the move is a novel experience, even if due to Sheffield's famous pothole system, i'm struggling to get everything down properly. Oh well, my typing's probably still better now than i will be after I get out after being pumped full of stuff, (bloody hell there are so many speed humps about here!!!) so I might as well get as much down as possible.

Returning back to this horrible customer service debacle though, I can't help but feel that the notion of being seen to do your job properly, of making sure your customer is happy, has become an end to itself that in some cases actually takes precedence over actually doing your job properly. The best kind of professionalism comes from having confidence in your ability to do the job properly. The worst kind is completely unconnected with ability at best, and at worst is detrimental to the same. I don't want some company's customer service policy force, say, the camera store's sales guys to be so far up my arse that they can't get on with selling cameras to other people.

Well, I spose I'll piece this together later because I'm not really making sense.

09:14 and we're at the computer store, gonna hover round there for a while until the time comes to go to the hospital. Later.

09:31 Well, now we're scouting round for a parking place. Predictably, there's nowhere to park so around we go, again and again. I have to admit, while "scared" is the wrong word, I am now getting distinctly nervous about the whole thing, and despite assurances that I'll be too busy being drugged up to be in any kind of distress, I'm not looking forward to this at all. And I'm pretty hungry too. MAybe I can get something to munch after I come out, depending on the procedure. Besides the literature about being sedated says "do not make any important decisions". How then, can I decide what KFC I want? ;)

Well, it looks like we've found somewhere to park, nothing to do but wait and worry I spose. And wait while we keep going forwards, backwards, forwards, backwards, trying to crab our way sideways into this teeny tiny parking place. We've been at it about five minutes now.

09:38, well, time to get out and go into the hospital. I would say "wish me luck" but by the time you read this i'll have finished it off. So I'll wish me luck instead. Good luck, me :).
I'll be a happier person when I get back to you, though probably somewhat stoned too :p.

11:33 I'm somewhat stoned. Not a huge amount, I still know right from wrong, I still prefer KFC to McDonalds, but, as I was advised I would, I am slurring my words, pausing halfway through my sentences when I forget what I'm talking about. My coordination is a little impared, so I'm tripping over the odd thing, ya know.

So I got into the hospital, up to where we were, and to give the place the kudos it deserves, the crappy waiting area is gone, replaced with a two room gleaming shiny waiting area, still troublingly filled with that... clinical smell that afflicts all medical practices and hospitals I sat down and watched the occasional person walk past with the same tight "i am not worried" expression on their face. I was quickly called in and asked how I felt, which i answered: "Halfway between nervous and scared".

I sat down, answered a few questionsm signed a form saying "I agree etc etc" and it started. I had a blood pressure check,
Then out came a needle "you may feel a little scratch, like a cat scratch". It went in, and then it went in some more. "Yes,
I can feel that cat scratching right there" I said as the anesthetist kaughed.Ultimately though, it was only a few seconds before i felt my mind closing in. Not a loss of concentration as such but the thoughts themselves seemed "heavier", sluggish, like it was hard to hold a thought into my head long enough to articulate it. And though it may come as a disapointment for those of you who like all the gory details, I don't actually remember much of the operation. Thanks to the sedative, I hardly remember a thing - it's like being half asleep you don't really realise what's going on, which is cool :).

11:49, now I'm at the co op so it's time to get out and spend money on scrumptious yummy thingies.

And that's all that happened today. Now I have a mouthful of medical thread, I've already had the residual bleeding and the substantial soreness, but other than that I've spent most of today relaxing, watching wimbledon, eating ice cream etc, it's

been a nice chilled out afternoon. And now I've finally got this sorted, I'm off to bed :).

Technological Woes...

After getting pissed off with my stuttering and failing Geforce 7900GT that finally gave up the ghost after two years of overheating, I surfed overclockers for a new card.

Now Nvidia seem to have this bizarre numbering thing going on when it comes to their cards - I'd always assumed that the higher the number, the better the card. So with that in mind,

8500GT with 512mb Ram > 7900GT with 256mb Ram.
Right?
Wrong.

Unfortunately, the only reason I know it's wrong is because I fitted the 8500GT and went back to playing my favourite games. Or tried to go back to playing them, because to be frank, the 8500GT is so slow, it's not even worth buying it for running 3d studio max on - that's right, a 3d modelling program requires more performance than this thing can give.
So who does buy a 3d graphics card with 512mb of ram, geforce no less, and doesn't want to play games on it? Quite a few people apparently because there are even worse cards like the 8400 for sale, which seems to be just powerful enough for word processing.

Admittedly, there's nothing wrong with the card, it does the job it says it does on the box - which is not the same as the job it says it does at overclockers: "smooth gaming with the future DirectX 10 games". You have got to be absolutely kidding me. This thing won't even run Star Trek Legacy without fitting and starting like an epileptic at a disco (find that comment offensive? Good, if you're the sort of person who finds stuff like that offensive then you deserve to be offended), and that's about as graphically intensive as Unreal Tournament 3's USER MENU!
"Unbeatable Performance" How the hell do they put that on the box with a straight face, knowing that the card is not as good as one that went out of date over three years ago??.

I'll tell you - on further inspection, the only place on this box that says "8500GT" is the sticker that's been slapped on the front. Looking online, it looks like they use the same boxes for all their cards, and the only thing that changes is the stickers, so essentially, not only have overclockers regurgitated the same crap they use to sell all their cards - good AND bad - but this box is just repeating the lies. "Double Your Performance With SLI" SLI MY CARD?! Jesus Mary and Joseph on a pogo stick, who the hell would buy two of these wastes-of-a-pci-slot to SLI them together and still get less power out of the pair than out of a 3 year old £25 Geforce 7900GT?! Am I missing something here?! That's like fitting two 1.1 litre engines in a car, when you could get a 6 litre v8 for a quarter of the price!! Geez, are people that stupid? Er, I cut it close by buying this damn thing, but I would never buy TWO of them, good god!

I'm going to have a quick look round, seeing if there are any settings i need to enable to get the card to do the job I bought it for but I think it's gonna be an ebay jobbie. It had been in my computer for less than an hour and a half before I decided that it needs to be replaced. So if you're looking round for a graphics card to grace your computer, a card that looks good but doesn't actually require you to buy any games to take care of any of its processing power, the 8500 is the one for you, and I have one for sale right here, at cost, £46.99, many thanks.

Oh, Its not all bad luck with technology by the way, I took my clothes out of the drier one morning this week to get ready for work, inside the pocket of one i found a little cf card pouch with "sandisk" on the side.
"oops" I thought, opening it to find my 4gb 60x lexar card in there. That thing had been through a 75 minute 40 degree C wash cycle, and then through a 2 hour cycle in the drier at about 50C.
I stuck it in my camera out of sheer optimism, and snapped a few photos. Did it work? Ha.
Well, yes it did actually, it worked fine. So I'll put that one down to luck :).

Have fun, I'll be in touch.

Shopping - can I call it that?

Well, I'm here in my nice warm room, my new if searingly bright 22 watt flouro light is busy burning the paint off everything, crumpling papers, evaporating my drinks, melting anthing made of plastic, and generally doing what any object brighter than the sun does to spend its free time.

So what did I did this afternoon? Who gives a stuff? let's skip that.
I got home from work and ended up being taken to Meadowhall with my sis, ostensibly to get a father's day present (more on this later). After a while it ended up being a general shopping trip, so I ended up getting a cool new things.

Course, first place, I went to was the O2 shop to check out the Iphones there. Rumour has it that they're gonna be PAYG in the UK before long, though the cost is something that still seems to be hotly disputed on various sites, with one side arguing that the new model is miles better value, and are provided as part of a much more flexible more versatile service (PAYG instead of contract), while the other side argue that "they're apple, they've got 'I' in the name, they're gonna be twice as expensive as they should be".

I spose time will tell which reality comes true, though the quick release of the Iphone Mk 2, the what, "3G Iphone" or something like that, has come hot on the heels of the original and is filling a seat that is not so much still warm, as still occupied. The novelty of the iPhone has only barely begun to wear off, and already Apple are pushing newer models down our throats. The optimist in me says "hey this's progress, better technology, cheaper prices", the cynic says "they want their money twice, the cheaper it is the more they sell". Either way, the owners who clamoured to be the first to get their hands on the hot new iphone are now left in the cold with something that is being deliberately called out of date and inferior.

Still, happened to me with my camera, tis just the price of being in the technology race i spose. After visiting the O2 shop, one of the places I went to was along to the local camera store (despite swearing I'd never set foot in there again - they seem to have had a change of staff) and ended up staring lovingly at the lonely Nikon D3 - my gaze following its countours while my fingers lovingly traced its outline on the glass that kept it safe from my prying attention... Ahem.
Not quite, but still, it's a sexy piece of kit, but sleek, it is not.
The D3, on first inspection looks like a complete and absolute whale of a camera, huge, overweight, overpriced, incredibly complex, it's everything that you don't think of when you decide to buy a camera. It's not slick, it's not cool, it's not sleek or sexy, in fact i'd go so far as to call it ugly. bulbous, ugly, prodigious, the D3 is a workhorse, without ornamentation, without any fancy acronyms, without any superfluous features or acoutrements, the D3 is a workhorse in the same way that a volvo tractor cab is a workhorse - expensive, powerful, ugly, does the job again and again and again, keeps going and going and going and going...

But man, that thing was so damn huge, I'm amazed anyone can carry it around their neck all day! That said though, the D3 is a beast, absolute incredible beast, you won't get much better, and if a camera needs to do it, the D3 probably does it. Bloody hell, it makes my £1000+ of D200 feel cheap and plasticky by comparison!
But then it would do that, being nearly £2500.

I still want one though, but I spose like any tool, there are times when you're doing a job that you don't need to use it, and I spose the D200 fills the gap the D3 leaves open. I spose I'm in two minds about the D3. It looks like the fat ugly unwanted cousin of the D200, it looks like those self obsessed bodybuilders that spend so much time on looking like they've had a foot pump shoved up their arses, that they've forgot that there's nothing inside (used solely as an example, a mate of mine is a bodybuilder, and I only take the piss out of him occasionally). But despite its ugliness, I want the D3 for what it can do, I spose the intricacies of its performance are lost on any non-photographer, but it is one hell of an advanced piece of kit. The d3 is proof positive that cameras these days are as much about electronics and computer code as they are about mirrors and glass.

I did kinda lead myself away from the whole O2 thing with this self indulgent textual orgasm about the D3 though, the one thing I forgot to mention is that my favourite youtube guy, Armake21 (no link as you won't find anything), a guy whos job was to review shitty games, lose his temper with them, generally raise a laugh and criticise things, has (after being deleted by Youtube) reappeared in the guise of "Nicotinealien". And it was one of his very very random videos - this one in fact - that I left playing on a couple of the iphones as I walked out of the 02 store, admittedly to a disappointingly delayed bemused reaction from the staff. So yeah, glad he's back.

I went to a health store who advised that if i MUST drink 2 litres of coca cola a day (diet coke - normal coke is about 800 calories per 2 litres or something) then I should probably have calcium supplements to offset the phosphoric acid eating me to bits :). Well, along those lines.
Also topped up on my creatine and protein supplements.

Where else did I go? Well, to Game, my friendly local games supplier, where I bought a couple of bits of software just to stop me getting bored (1) (the second was some kinda (actually fairly decent) train simulator). Yes I was that bored. I suppose its a lads thing, wanting to drive big heavy powerful bits of machinery.

Now my parents have been having a more than a few domestics recently, in fact to me it seems that they're increasing in magnitude and in severity. I used to think I was imagining it but now I'm honestly not sure. Now my parents are deciding to cancel the 2 week holiday in venice that they've both been looking forward to for ages, because they can't stand the sight of each other, which is why they've been married for 30 years.
So for this father's day, I decided to force the issue somewhat, with my dad's fathers day gift.
A 200 odd page guide to the city of Venice.

A push in the right direction I feel.

One place I went before we disappeared was to the local toy store, and I saw something that I fancied getting for my nephew. They call em hoverdisks.
Imagine a foil balloon 36 inches across and shaped like a flying saucer, you're along the right lines. The only real difference is that these balloons have rigid edges (provided by internal poles) that ensure the balloon bounces - instead of crumpling - off hard objects, walls, rocks, etc.
There's only so many words with which I can describe what is essentially a variation on a balloon.
These things used to be something ridiculous like £10 a piece, now they're £1.50 a piece. They're amazing, they're filled with air, and weigh next to nothing. You can balance the things on a finger and my nephew? he loves em!

So, what did I buy? Well, if you didn't read above, a picture is provided below, where you can see everything :). I do include them as links too but I like to have the odd photo visible on my blog page as it breaks the text up.

One thing I didn't mention is the music and beer.
I'm currently sat here listening to my very very cool new album which I thought I'd get because I'm random like that, there are a lot of good tunes on it including one, La Nina Mecanica that completely took me by surprise. Why?Because for some random reason it has a 20 second sample of Rammstein's "Morgenstern" in it (specifically 3:14 to about 4:00 -will be different on the album version) . I spose that's kinda like George Orwell's 1984 including some of the lyrics of "God Save The Queen", and I'm referring to the talentless tuneless shit version, not the national anthem. Completely different types of work by completely different artists, still manage to find their way into the weirdest places.

The last thing I did today was to get some beer, noticeably some guinness, on account of the Irish decision to stick two fingers up at the EU. In this country, we were denied a referendum on something that became deeply unpopular with us as a result, and to see the Irish band together by choice and refute and refuse this "lisbon treaty" both for themselves and on our behalf, is cause for celebration, I feel.

So now I'm off to enjoy my beer, listen to tunes and relax. I've been doing a lot of reading recently, maybe I'll catch up on that.

Oh yeah, here's the picture - my shopping :)

Bees don't taste of anything (except fur!)

Okay, so, I've had a fairly sedate day. The hard drive for my laptop arrived yesterday and I've just been spending the time since, getting the laptop up and running. Time consuming and tedious, but not taxing, and now I've got the laptop back up to full functionality, yay go me, ready for more photo trips. Just a case of replacing the hard drive and getting the software whacked back on there.

So I've been spending time at the gym, that is taxing, but it's fun as well, and it's kinda rewarding and relaxing at the same time to get myself all worn out by bettering myself, getting fitter and stronger with each visit. I've been running a lot recently as well, and last nights run was fantastic. I don't know why, I just seemed stronger this time round, I was definitely faster. It was like I got tired later, was able to surge forwards faster, I remember being surprised at just how fast I could move, and how long I could keep it up.

I had a little excitement on the way back from the gym though, I wander down to the park on the way home and start running. I get maybe 30 meters passing the bees and birds and other euphemistic combinations of animals, when the latest in maybe a dozen buzzy type creatures spots me.
It heads on a fast curve that must have put its head out through its arse, and with the evident urge to kiss me (that's what must have caused it!) it flew straight smack into my mouth - which was partially open at the time, what with me running and everything.
I felt the smack, I heard the bang, and then felt the damn thing buzzing around, followed quickly by a - did it? - yes, the damn thing stung me.

I physically spat the poor creature out, and watched it spiral down to the floor in a "wtf just happened?" type way. I didn't chek whether the thing was okay, as I felt something vaguely like the sting still stuck in my lip (it wasn't).

So for those of you who wondered why people ate insects, as the title suggests, bees don't taste of anything, except fur. And stingyness. Hope it was okay anyway, cool little industrious creatures, bees.

So there you go, in several hundred words "I've been to the gym and then ate a bee".
I've never been one for brevity.

But hey, i'm kinda getting tired now, but I'm busy watching FBI files so I figure I'll watch this, go to bed, or something like that.

Have fun :).

New car? New legs!

Well, I can't remember what I wrote in my last blog, so I'm going to read it now to find out where in my oh-so-exciting life I got up to... Ah yes, bitching about work.

Well I'm gonna leave that out - obviously I have more to bitch about now than I did before, but who cares. Work is crap, there's a support group for it, it's called "life" and they meet in the pub.

So, my sister's passed her test and got a car, yay. What's to sy, it's a big thing to have happen to you, your first car, but I have to admit I can't think of much to say on the subject, she's picking it up fast, and the other day she picked me up from work and we had a nice razz round.

I'm pleased to say that I've started running again AGAIN, after yet another hiatus to give me time to be lazy. This time I'm running two miles a day instead of 1.1, and if I stick to grass and suchlike I should be just fine, which is cool, as I am really really really getting sick of civilian life.

Other than that, nothing has happened, so to be honest I don't even know why I wrote a blog, it's certainly taken up 10 minutes of my time that I didn't have to waste. But hey, life is like that, it's not all action and excitement I spose.

Take care, I'm off for a shower and an early night :).

The Ball's Rolling Again...

You may have ntoiced that both my motivation and the momentum behind my Army application has been pretty non existent of late. With the weather improving there are so many cool things I could do like go places and take photos of stuff, and go to other places and take photos of stuff, and suchlike. It's great in the short term, but thinking about it, I don't want to be a call centre monkey for the rest of my life, and when winter draws in again I don't want to be stuck inside at home, or inside at work, and have nowhere but those two places to go.

So we're back on. I've got my motivation back, and I'm once again training towards my application. Especially now that my ex flatmate Sean has gone in as a communications engineer, I can't let that little sod have all the fun now can I ;).

I've still got a job to go to at the moment, which is a surprise considering the fact that not only have the company been handing discipliniaries around like sweets, just to make sure all the managers are kept in practice at management things. Not only this, but the company have ever so kindly decided to "restructure", putting 140 mid-level managers, most of whom have been there 7, 8, 9 years, out of a job. In a couple of cases, families where the husband and wife work at the same company are now in real real real financial trouble, that would make my latest episode of skint-ness look like a kid losing his pocket money, so that's really sucky for them.
Fortunately for me, I only know three managers that are affected by this, and two of them are absolute dickheads. So while I'm not exactly gonna say "woo", it's slightly slightly slightly less sucky that those two are going.

So what else have I been up to?
Well I traded a laptop for a motorcycle. By this what I actually mean is that my laptop computer spontaneously failed, never to be coaxed into life again (needs a new hard disk, even recovery software can't touch it, grr I want my money back etc :P), but after sticking a thread up on a bike forum, I have finally managed to get my bike working after many many months of being off the road.
The problem was water in the fuel. Half a litre of the stuff swirling around at the bottom of the tank, clogging the fuel filters and wetting the plugs. No wonder the damn thing wouldn't work, so yay, go me, my bike now works again!

We come now though, to an altogether more disturbing subject of discussion:

Fashion, the contrived artificual demand for certain types of clothes, has turned again, it seems, and to use Eddie Izzard's explaination of fashion (2:40 onwards), most of the people around work are so Cool, Cool, Hip and Groovy that they're within nanometers of crossing that line into full-blown Looking Like A Dickhead.

There are two specific things that jump out at me. First of all, there's an almost exponential proliferation of these studded belts. You have two kinds of these, the first ones which have usually been the preserve of alternative, emo, mosher, whatever you want to call them, groups of people, which is fair enough, but now those are beginning to spread everywhere.
These, I can live with.

The ones that get on my nerves, are these ones with slogans "studded" into them. The majority of them seem to be along religious lines, "Jesus saves", "Jesus Loves", "I love Jesus" etc.
Now there are two reasons that these annoy me. First of all, people are wearing them because it's fashionable, not because they believe in Jesus (I'm an agnostic/athiest fundamentalist apparently, according to some christian dude - I'm not religious in the least), so people are kinda getting preached at, by people that don't even follow the values of Jesus (happens all the time, just go to any church), So not only does this annoy me, but the second one, is that some of them are just ambiguously funny.
Seriously, I see the slogan "Jesus saves" and my mind fills in the blanks, "Jesus Saves, Score still 5-2". Yep indeedy.

Now we come to the other thing.
Smurf Hats.
No. Really, I'm not kidding.

I don't know whether some simian gangster in the town center of Nottingham or Medway or whatever decided it was cool to get a beanie hat and have it perching on the top of your head with the top traling down behind you like a wooly pony tail, and the companies just cottoned onto it, or whether the companies just screwed up the measurements on their latest product design and released a load of beanie hats that are 30cm long.

By accident or design (and bearing in mind that this isn't one of those villages conveniently and cleverly built half a day's walk from the nearest water supply, so if we don't like what we have we CAN just throw it away and replace it, or even send it to one of those villages) a whole bunch of people seem to have bought these things and are now putting them on their heads, with the result that the top half of these hats is dangling down the back of their heads making even the coolest and hippest studded-belt-clad youngster look like a bloody smurf.

The first one was an eyebrow raiser, the second one was a double take, now I'm entering rolling-eyes territory when I see these things, because they're spreading like the waistlines of the latest entrants to this lazy-ass job, of which there seem to be a fair few, despite the rolling programs of restructuring and redundancies and general "the-industry-is-in-decline-but-we're-still-on-top-but-let's-pretend-we're-not" crap. Apparently some of our managers went to other companies to look how they do things - yes, read it again, some of the managers from our company, the most successful in the industry, went to less successful less skilled companies, to learn how to do things.
This explains why every day, that place becomes a little bit more like a Dilbert strip I spose.

This is the company that two weeks before the first of two bank holidays in the same month, announced it was slashing overtime (the rate for working bank holidays) from 300% to 150%.
while simultaneously bringing an end to the £150 bi-annual attendance bonus.
Can you guess what happened?

Yep, that's right, on bank holiday monday we had about 8 staff in. The rest were quite sick with inconveniently sudden and acute ailments. And you know what? They got away with it, and I'm glad they got away with it too. Because frankly, [company] moves its employees around like chess pieces, and f**ks its employees around like AT&T is alleged to f**k their customers around. Our company really is one of those where the customer is always right. And now, that's becoming a problem, because now the customer is so right that we drop our underwear and bend over while simultaneously pleading "What is thy bidding, my master?" every time one of the suit-jacketed arseholes walks into the room.

The customer is so right in fact that senior management are running around like headless chickens trying to keep the customer happy, middle management are running around like headless chickens trying to keep senior management happy while looking for another job at the same time, and the junior managers are trying to stomp out bushfires and put down riots from the staff, while trying to show loyalty and concern for both the managers above them and the staff below them.

The staff themselves, the customer service battery chickens, have had enough, and the planning department are literally reorganising certain staff member's lunch breaks, because they're worried that if enough disgruntled and angry "customer service" agents get together in the same room, some kind of critical mass will be reached that can only result in a situation in which the fire brigade is called, the ambulances are called, and something horrible gets left on the customer liason manager's desk. The whole reason we stopped having our annual get-together with the client is literally because after a few beers, the client staff and our staff, were ready for and in some cases resorting to, punchups in the street.

And all the while, the calls keep coming, made by happy cheery clueless muppets, ignorant not only of the trouble they are directly causing, but the suffering and anger and hatred they are indirectly causing simply by existing as a source of income to the much vaunted (and much hated) customer.

We are not a happy business, but still we try. Feck knows why.People keep leaving, I suppose eventually there'll not be much of a business left.
But who cares, by the time the business goes down the pan, I'll be sitting inside 60+ tons of air conditioned tank, laughing my arse off at the entire industry and the idiots, the unmotivated bored angry idiots like myself, who are mostly too apathetic to leave it all behind.

Oh well, I've got things to do, like sit about and be bored, so now I'll go and get on with that :).
Have fun :).

Weight off my shoulders...

Okay, so after a couple of weeks of very frugal living, my ebay escapades are beginning to provide me with much much needed mon-aay. Admittedly I've made a loss on everything I've sold, because the odd quirk of ebay is that when you buy, you pay more than it's worth, when you sell, they pay less than it's worth.
I'd suck as a stock market trader.
But who cares. I shifted some crap I wasn't gonna use, and it made me enough cash to not have to hold up pizza delivery guys in the street or whatever. "Stand and deliver, your pizza or your life" doesn't have the same ring to it, especially since when I worked pizza delivery, I used to give that stuff away for free anyway.
But yes, my money woes are not exactly over, but they are fading, and with more money on the way I should be good to go right up until payday, at which point I'm not going to blast all my money away at stuff this time.

Well work's been its usual mediocre stuff. I've had my usual arguments with the managers, they've been handing round discipliniaries like sweets as usual (not me this time), and I actually followed my manager's advice and decided to be more objective about my job. I wrote a list of fors and againsts to decide whether this place is right for me. You can view it here if you've got the time to waste. Me? Well being my non-motivated self, I just kept putting the more annoying callers on hold and writing a little bit each time until I'd got it finished.

It's not all been bad though. I've decided to get another bike. And after the disastrously high figures quoted by my ex-current insurer for anything larger than a pushbike, I've gone to one of those price comparison places, which gave me a quote some 75% cheaper. Which means something like this, or if I'm lucky, something like this, are actually in reach, moneywise. I'd rather have the VFR (second bike), because at the weekend you can take the panniers off and go out to play. But it is more expensive, to buy, run, repair and insure.

Photography wise, I've had a busy week. Went back up to Manchester Airport with a mate, and set all my stuff and gubbins up. Yes, that is the camera connected to the laptop. The software I have means that the camera dumps the images straight to the hard drive, which gives me up to 20 gig of storage space before I need to start shooting to the CF card inside the camera. I've got 2 CF cards just to be on the safe side.

Pretty Woman (G-VROY - Virgin Atlantic Boeing 747-400) made a return to the airport, not only giving me some shots of her landing, but taxiing right past us some hours later before heading off into the sky again. It seems she visits manchester at least twice a week, so I should see more of her in the future. She's a magnificent aircraft, huge too, like an office building on wheels!

It was a very very productive day with me shooting over 750 photos! It took 5 hours to shoot them and another 8 hours to develop them. Meh. Still, I got some great pictures, so there you go :).

And now I'm off to sit about and do nothing for a bit. I like doing nothing, it doesn't require energy, or qualifications or thoughts.

Still, my nephew's coming round shortly so I suspect that period of idleness will be shortlived.
Have fun!

(Here's some pics from monday for ya)

Summer Partay!

Well, after eating a fantastically awesome meal of mum's best pasta cooking, I had a little nap.
I woke up bout 8:30 to the regular thump thump thump of someone having a party. Lots of happy excited voices etc, someone was having a fun time nearby.
After a little bit I decided I fancied a little wander about, and it'd be interesting enough to see where the party was. So sure enough after a little wander about, I find a garden full of happy cheery people, plenty of flowing beer about, happy kids and loud music. Cool, so people are getting into the swing of things.

Including me it seems, summer looks like it's gonna be a nice one. Having been conscripted to do the front garden, I spent all day yesterday out in the fantastically fantastic sunshine while listening to the radio - was a nice day's work actually. The fact that I got rather badly sunburned doesn't detract from it at all, maybe it's a sign of the weather to come :).

Other than this, I have been mostly broke, I spent the available money, right enough, I'm usually pretty good with budgeting.
What I didn't budget for though, was an unexpected import duty bill for £45. Basically that has really messed my finances up, and now I'm living on literally £3.50 a day. Oh well, when I get paid I should be okay :).

And now I'm off to enjoy the summer :).

Tripods and Tepees

This was written on the 3rd of May roundabout 2pm. I'm kinda falling behind in my blogging for a couple of reasons, hope to be on track soon.

Right now, I am sat in probably the most uncomfortable typing position in the world, inside a 3x6’ tent. I’ve got carpet burn on both elbows and I’m sweating like I’m in an oven. The temperature in here must be 30c. My nephew’s here accompanying me.

We’re sat inside a little makeshift tent, made out of one camera tripod, and about 8 or 9 sheets, quilt covers, quilts and towels, and I’ve got to admit I’m pretty happy with it. Sure we don’t actually need protection from the elements because we’ve set it up in the back bedroom (which is why it’s so damn hot!) but my nephew loves playing dens, so here we are, surrounded by little battery powered LED lamps, children’s storybooks, star-shaped pillows, little flags, and of course, camera equipment.

It’s a nice little setup.

This is the second day in a row that the den’s been put up to keep the little guy happy and while I’ve got to admit that if I hear “twit-twoo-thatmeansitsbedtime!” (usually at the rate of once every thirty seconds) one more time I’m gonna scream, he seems to be having a good ol’ time of keeping himself amused with his nice den.

Yesterday we went to the park to feed the ducks. Looks like we caught them a little late, that evening though, as they were all down the far end of the lake/pond/whatever, and were completely disinterested in both my camera, and the bread which my nephew threw at them in almost full slices.

It was a nice walk in the park though, the sun was shining, the birds were singing etc, and after last year’s floods and this year’s mediocre weather, it’s really, really nice to walk in your stereotypical green meadow type area.

So what have I been up to other than being dragged around by my nephew for the last two days (He’s fantastic in small doses, but constant exposure quickly leads to high stress etc etc.)? Well, I’ve been mostly receiving things from ebay, including my new flash unit for my camera.

And a very sparkly thing it is as well, the manual’s some 120+ pages long, so I went online and looked for a tutorial to learn how to do the things I wanna do. Looks like I’m probably gonna end up getting another flash unit sometime soon.

I shipped my old lens, and my new 50mm lens arrived, so I’ve been itching to go out and get some use out of it, but we’ve not really had the weather for it.

One other thing I would like to add.

You may remember from my previous blogs, my mentioning of an artist called “Phil” who I used to see regularly up at the pub.

Well a couple of weeks ago, he was taken into hospital for some kind of operation or something, and he didn’t come out again. Thursday was the day of his funeral, and it was very well attended by dozens of bikers. The world has lost a very talented artist, and a genuine guy.

Well, time to go; we’ll prolly take my nephew out round the park again or something. That’ll be cool.

Spring Rain...

Well, okay, it's not exactly "tomorrow" but I'm lazy like that.

I'm sat here in my warm comfy house, while the first of what is supposed to be many squalls pelts down outside.

So what is going on with all the spending then?

Well, when I went up to my bro's and had a look at his autofocus 50mm lens, I never realised that you can actually pick them up pretty cheaply. So I ordered one, for £52, and it arrived today from Hong Kong, only 3 days after ordering it - that's fast. The reviews rave about it, it's apparently a VERY good lens for the money. And it looks good too - it's the most modern lens I own.

My old 50mm lens is sat in a box, well wrapped, ready to be shipped down to Middlesex. I had hoped to ship it today but it seems I have to wait in for a bed to be delivered (I didn't order it). The guy finally paid for it, and a bloody good price he got for it too. Yeah, I made a loss on that one. Still.

I've ordered a few other goodies too. An SB800 flash, 1gb of memory for my laptop, and a USB 2 card for my laptop. I've also ordered a memory card for my cam, a USB cable to replace my annoyingly short one, and a little spirit level thing so I can get my camera straight when I'm shooting things. I've put a couple of things up for sale too, and if I can sell them I might get another new lens.

So that's it really. I had a load of beer on saturday night, but to be honest, I didn't really enjoy it. I think I'm losing interest in beer now.

Still, life goes on :).

Cash haemmoraging alert!

I'm just leaving myself a little note here so I can look back mid month and laugh: Congratulations me, I've used a £60 mouse on a £70 desk to spend £293 in 5 minutes.
Still - I've spent more in less before, and I am owed money by more than one person and I have stuff to sell on ebay too etc etc etc.

More to follow tomorrow :).

Blog Value Pack! 2 for 1!

Chapter One - Cat Fighting!

Disclaimer: Animals were harmed in the making of this blog. Not by us though, and not by any life form capable of being prosecuted. (He's fine now, and has been checked out by a vet).

So, it's 6pm, I'm laid on my nephew's trampoline with my hands behind my head, listening to the birds singing, basking in the sun almost like the cat on the grass next to the trampoline, and staring into the blue sky.

I'd been asked to move some stone chippings from my sister's old house to her new one. She's had to move out temporarily so they can refurbish her house, and so after a pretty damn painless move (not like the last one where I had to do everything to the garden short of dig it up with heavy machinery and start over) we've got everything sorted and she's all settled in. My nephew's trampoline and his playhouse are set up in the garden, and we're all relaxing outside.

My mum's driven home, leaving me to spend some time with my sister and nephew, and my nephew's roaming around the garden and his playhouse, I'm lounging around on the trampoline, my sister's doing work on her laptop on the garden table. It's turning into a nice day.

Throughout the afternoon, my nephew and I had played on his trampoline (I was playing on it to keep him happy. Okay, I was playing on it because it's fun too).

Tommy, the black and white cat, was on his lead secured to a post in the garden. He wanted to explore, but we didn't want to lose him so he has a little harness and a lead to stop him from wandering off. For an hour he happily roamed about and ate the grass, sniffed the plants and generally practiced looking cute and curious.

After a while we decided to swap and let Tigsy - a brown and black tabby cat who is tommy's litter-mate out into the garden, so Tommy goes back in the house, and Tigsy comes out on the lead. My nephew kept occasionally going inside and leaving the door open, so I had to catch Tommy (who evidently loved being outside) and return him to the house.

Later on, it gets colder. We've brought the cats in and are now relaxing inside. It occurs to me that we've not seen Tommy, and during a search of the house, I realise why as I find both the hallway door and the back door to the garden open. The little dude's wandered out, and despite half an hour of looking, was nowhere to be seen. He's apparently done this before, so we left a cat box outside for him, and ordered some food.
I spent the next two hours wondering what he was up to, and I realised that while I don't get on with cats in general, I took a liking to Tommy and Tigsy because they're both cute and sociable.

Anyway. Time passes, and while we're eating our food we suddenly hear this loud miaowing/screeching outside. Evidently two cats that don't like each other. One of them is Tommy. We both leap up from our food, my sis runs outside and comes back in carrying a struggling Tommy, who is soaking wet. Evidently he's so psyched from his fight that he is scared of/wants to attack everything.

We lock the doors as my sis cuddles him, we're glad he's okay, and we're glad to have him back.
He moves in my sisters arms, and with alarm, we both notice that he's left a bloody fur print down my sister's arm - he is hurt after all!

Of course, what should we do? The vets were closed, the PDSA was closed, what were we sposed to do with this injured cat? Tommy calms down, and gives my sister the opportunity to examine him - a small injury to his back right paw, he can still walk on the leg and the bleeding has stopped. We both kept an eye on him as he walks around quite happily, occasionally licking at his leg, but still frightened, jumping at every sound.
Tigsy comes in to check on him, and starts sniffing him. Tommy sees Tigsy sniffing him and calms right down, glad to be home and back in the company of his litter-mate.

And then Tigsy's lifts his tail straight upright, the fur standing out on end, making it super bushy and 3 times the size, and starts emitting the most alarming howling/whining noise I've ever heard him make, his eyes constantly fixed on Tommy's. Tommy responds in kind, by doing the same, and starts spitting and hissing. Uh oh.

Anyway we get the cats seperated, and while we're checking if Tommy is ok in the kitchen, Tigsy's sat on the stairs making this weird noise.
The two cats have got to live together though, and in the abscence of any advice from the cat charities (out of hour, no one to talk to) we determine that we've got to get the cats back used to each other. Tommy stinks - we notice that he's soaking wet, because not to put too fine a point on it, it looks like the other cat has pissed all over him, making him stink of enemy-cat. We rub a little pet shampoo foam over his back, taking care to keep clear of his leg, and the howling from Tigsy subsides a bit.

We get both of them on a lead, I've got one, my sis has the other, and keeping them close and under control, we let them first see, and approach each other.
Again, both start howling and hissing at each other, but this dies down as they get used to each other again.

Over time, we let them get closer, and they howl less and less and become more accustomed to each other. Eventually, Tommy sits down almost next to Tigsy, who responds by going to sleep.
We let them both off the leads, ready to seperate them if there are any problems.
Tommy goes straight over to the corner and starts relaxing, while Tigsy roams around the living room. He roams round close to the chair, turns round the corner, and there's Tommy.
Both cats freeze, and we both intently watch Tigsy gingerly walk up to Tommy, ready to stop any fighting.
Tigsy starts sniffing Tommy intently, while Tommy sits there and lets it happen.
And then Tigsy starts licking him - literally, he's there licking Tommy's forehead, almost as if he's welcoming him back to the house, and identifying himself as a friend. Tommy growls a little bit eventually, and Tigsy responds by wandering off and sitting down nearby. Seems we have peace at last.

I went home after this, but according to a phone call this afternoon, Tommy has been examined and is recovering nicely. Both he and Tigsy are getting on as well as ever now, and life seems to have returned to normal.

So what else have I been up to? It was my brother's birthday a couple of days ago, and we all decided to go to Pizza Hut to have a nice family celebration. Of course, as always happens, my mum waited until I was totally skint (had no money) before announcing that it's my brother's birthday in xyz number of days - three days before payday. I remember though that my brother asked me to order something for his camera a while ago, and while I never received the full order, I kept one half of it (they kept my money - meh). Operating on the basis that something is better than nothing, I grab his impromptu "present", and off we go.

What followed was a nice family night, less of a birthday party and more of a family occasion. It turns out my bro never did buy a screen protector - my present to him - so hopefully this one will come in useful for him. Of course I felt a little guilty that that was all I was able to offer him, especially since ht and his fiancee had bought me two lovely presents for my birthday, but I did mitigate it by remembering the "Buy the laptop or don't buy it, I don't care, and I'm not lowering my price" attitude he gave me before I bought my laptop. Seemed more than a little mercenary.

Still, I bet it was a disappointing birthday for him, which is sad, but seems to be for the par in our family when you consider how crappy my birthday was. Still, will keep my eye out for something I think he'll like - it would make a nice random surprise for him to get a belated birthday present :).

My ebay auction turned out to be a disaster. I bought the lens for £35, and put it up for auction with a Polariser Filter (value approx £15) included. I was very pleased as the price went up and up, at £30 with several hours to go. I figured that it would at least get to £50 and let me buy my new lens. I drifted off to sleep, having been up all day, and woke up later. The first thing I did was check the clock - 02:30am. The auction would be finished by now, time to check how much I'd made.
With horror, I saw that the final sale price was £31.30! There was no last minute bidding frenzy, in fact no bidding at all for the last three hours. Every time I want to buy something, bidders are snapping at it like bloodthirsty sharks, and something triples in value every 10 minutes! My lens when I bought it went from £6 to £35 in the last five minutes, why didn't this happen with mine?!
The thing is now that the bloke doesn't seem to be interested in paying for the damn thing.
Good. Hopefully I can relist the bloody thing and get a proper price for it.
Meh.

Still, I took the camera out today and got some good snaps of the local ducks again, so hopefully a few of those will have come out okay. I'll see to them later.

And now I'm off to drink Fanta and watch The Bill.

See ya.

And now we come to an entry I wrote a few days ago. I just never got round to uploading it because I'm lazy like that.

Chapter Two - "Kickass Brio" (Friday 18th April, 2008)

So I’m sat here on the makeshift bed we’ve put together for my ickle nephew, in the now almost completely refurbished spare room. Yep, I booked a day off work so I could go to a hospital appointment, and I seem to have spent the majority of the day moving, transporting, redistributing and otherwise relocating household junk - plenty of it mine – from the spare room/bathroom, to the loft.

I went along to my hospital appointment fairly quickly though, in the same seemingly ramshackle (admittedly it is having major renovation work carried out on it at the moment) building.

I was asked to wait, this time in the corridor outside the waiting room. As a good ten or twelve of us sat there in this dimly lit drywall lined corridor, I mused on the paper sign stating “please bear with us while renovation work is taking place” – or words to that effect.

I was seen surprisingly quickly; that is, I’d not got my arse on the seat before I was up again, and had a pleasant chat with the anaesthetist.

I then came home, sunk a can of hyper juice, and got on with building my nephew’s favourite toy.

See, my nephew is a big fan of Brio – a wooden train set type thing. You purchase the track yourself and build the track in any form you want – it’s kinda cool, you can build any track you want.

Now, the saying goes that “Model trains are like boobs. They’re meant for children but sooner or later, grown men end up playing with them”, and I suppose that’s the case here. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t pushing the trains around making brum brum noises or anything, but I did, as I always do, take great pleasure in building the largest and most elaborate tracks that I can. I like beating my own previous creations in terms of size and complexity, and the bigger the track, the happier my nephew.

So as I was saying, I’m sat here right now, my nephew is intently playing with the track, so far we’ve had “train races”, and “train rescue”. I’ll be right back – I’ve got to tag along while he finds something to do elsewhere. Whatever he’s doing, it sounds noisy.

Right, normal operation has been resumed; he’s distracting himself with a playmobil fire engine and a big toy crane that I used to play with when I was a kid. All in all, it’s pretty relaxed. We’re both chilling out in the nice new room, him with his train, crane and fire engine, and me with my laptop and my camera.

The urge to play with toys doesn’t dissipate with age, it seems.

What else have I been up to? Well, I’ve been spending a lot of time duck shooting – that is, photographing the ducks. I’m really happy with four of the photos, so that’s good. I’ve put my little 50mm lens up for sale so that I can buy a more modern Autofocus version of the same lens, and I also intend to get an SB800; A very sparkly speedlight. It kinda surprised me when I had a look at one at my bro’s house. Turn the speedlight on and it powers on with the same high-voltage whine that defibrillators make. I had to resist the urge to shout “clear!” before triggering it.

I’m also looking at selling an engine from one of my old bikes. It’s worth maybe £250/£200, so with some luck, I’ll also be able to buy a Nikkor 18-200 VR lens. You know, the one actually designed for my camera. [Edit, 25th April - no you won't be able to buy that lens, it's over £400! You must have meant the 55-200 VR.]

But hey, my life is so interesting right now that I’ve run out of things to update you on, so I’m gonna carry on chilling out here, and will no doubt end up chasing my little nephew round until he tires out and goes to sleep.

See ya!