Random Spending...

...Okay, so I woke up this morning, and made a pot of coff-ay and stared at the wall and drank my coff-ay...

...sorry, wrong cartoon... ...oh yeah, that link's not safe for work, it's got like... ...swearing... and stuff...

I didn't wake up this morning, because I was in fact, awake this morning until about 6am, playing Silent Hunter 3. It's a damn fine game, It's detailed, and very addictive. In fact, it's a game with only one minor problem - I'm sinking scores of ships that are flying Royal Navy and British Merchant Navy flags. While it's only a game, and sinking scores of ships is a good thing for your mission score, as a British Soldier to be, (I hope), sinking battleships and cruisers with your own nation's flag flying from their masts, kinda takes away from the pleasure of playing the game, and while I acknowledge that the crews of the real U-boats were no less brave or honourable than our own sailors, I still have an objection to torpedoing British shipping, even though it's only in a virtual sense - I mean, on one hand it's only a game, but on the other hand, imagine how well a war game would sell over here or in the US (cos I have American readers too), if you played the part of a militant shooting at western soldiers - it wouldn't sell at all would it? Well I wouldn't buy it, that's for sure...

...it's for this reason that I've spent a few quid and have got Silent Hunter 4 on the way - it's exactly the same except with better graphics, and the important change that instead of fighting in the atlantic, commanding a U-boat and torpedoing British shipping, you're commanding a US Navy submarine in the pacific, and torpedoing the Japanese ships - Now I like Japan, it's a cool place, now, but the whole pearl harbour/they-weren't-on-our-side thing makes me feel slightly less bad sinking virtual Japanese ships, than sinking British ones...

So what are we to learn from the above rambling diatribe? I take computer games too seriously? I'm fiercely patriotic? Make your own mind up - I haven't made mine up yet.

Anyway, in the real world, my so-called gum disease is abating, I woke up this morning feeling fine, and even now, feel no pain - it's like the attack of agony I had never happened. Strange...

I've gone and gotten myself in trouble at work again which will probably mean yet another ferking discipliniary. Am I guilty? That depends...
I'm guilty of nothing more than the same every single one of my colleagues is guilty of (using computer (if such it may be called - it's a pentium for pete's sake) for personal purposes (looking at work-safe image PREVIEWS on google search, for crying out loud, really REALLY antisocial productivity destroying behavior isn't it...) - something everyone I work with does, every single day. So yes, I am guilty of doing it, but what I'm most guilty of, is being caught. 70 people in that office, 70 people doing it, and I'm one of about half a dozen people that have been dragged into investigations, for nothing more - I feel - than to have an example made of us.
Was I angry when I was told? Oh yes. When asked, if I thought the decision to pursue an investigation was fair, I said no. When asked again, I said that I would not be bullied into saying, nor believing, that it was fair - it isn't. That place crushes every single spark of autonomy or independent thought that any one of its employees, if such they may be called (I prefer "victims"), has. And you can look forward to the naming and shaming when I get fired, oh yes indeed... It'll be like Michael Douglas in "Falling Down", except without the firearms and emotional instability...

*blinks*

Sorry I went a bit random and vengeful there, still it'll be fun to look back on...

So what else have I done? On a topic COMPLETELY unconnected to the above, I had a bit of a random spending spree on ebay, and due to reasons beyond my comprehension, I now have about 50 quidsworth of inert ammunition (Yes, inert - that means I am NOT about to go and shoot up a fast food place and demand a burger at gunpoint) of various calibers on its way to me. Why? I don't know. I figured it'd be cool to have sitting around. 7.62x51? 7.62x33? 5.56? 9mm? .50 cal? 30mm? You name it, it'll be sitting around in my bedroom, while my money is sitting around in someone else's bank account. Still, in a few weeks I won't miss the money and I'll still have the gear. Still, that's impulse buying for you I spose.

So what am I going to do now? Well I'm going to finish this post for a start, then I'm off to drink lots of beer and listen to all sorts of music and eat yummy food and stuff...

Um yeah. so, that's like, it.

See you round, folks!

PS: As something of an afterthought, I'd just like to thank Jeff, Lexi, Alex, Matt, and David_Precious - particularly David, who I don't think I actually know, and despite seeming to have stumbled across this blog completely randomly, has been sticking with it for a fair few months, (thanks matey, glad to have you onboard). I don't know if you guys are my only readers, but regardless, at least I know I'm not shouting out into the night and getting nothing back for it, so cheers for reading, at least someone is showing an interest. I should spend some money on advertising and become like, famous and stuff, and then maybe I wouldn't have to work for a living or a news station would want to interview me and I could become one of these celebrity arseholes who make money for being famous despite being talentless and despite the fact that no-one knows what they're famous for...

So yeah, thanks!

(Did that last bit sound like I wam desperate for attention and have low self esteem? The first is kinda 25% true, and the second is absolutely untrue, hehe)

Anyway, I'm off to chill and get drunk...

Okay so it's not that bad...

Okay, so I've been doing some research on the net on a few medical sites- seems what I actually have is gum disease - oh joy, well that's both good and bad news - On the downside, it means that I'm still probably going to suffer with wisdom tooth problems at some point, but on the upside, gum disease, being extremely common, is extremely easy to treat - with some luck, I shouldbe able to get my hands on some kind of medicine or something tonight.

Also, just a quick note to let you guys know that my internet at home has gone down - so I'm adding this at work - if you don't hear from me for a few days, you know why.

Well, have fun :).

More dental agony, but Anbesol helps!

Damn, it's never ending!

I['ve got another dentists appointment to have the work she started earlier this month finished, so I can hopefully go and pass my ADSC Medical. In the meantime however, in the past couple of days, I've been having hellish pain in my gum - not my jaw, my gum.

that's right folks, after thinking I'd gotten away with it for so long, the first of my lower third molars (wisdom teeth) has started trying to come through. While I don't have toothache, because the tooth itself is brand new and absolutely perfect, the tooth is essentially trying to punch through the gum above it, a-la chestburster from the aliens movies. And my gum is sore - oh boy, is it sore. I can't swallow very well because of the pain, so eating and drinking is unpleasant, it just seems, well, not "unfair" (because fair isn't a concept I recognise - life isn't fair, so why bother moaning about it), but just damned annoying. At the start of the month I had a tooth extraction, I'm having fillings next month, and now I have a wisdom tooth coming through - so it's all happening! On the plus side, my mouth ulcer (yes I had one of those too!) has healed so I'm not in pain from that anymore. I've got some Anbesol anelgesic stuff, so hopefully that should take away at least some of the pain from this thing trying to push through my gum!

Right, what's gone right the past week or so...

Well, I'm really getting into Simcity 4: Rush Hour, and I've built a city that is really burgeoning - something that I've not been able to do before - so even though It's only a computer game, it's one I've been playing for four years and I'm finally beginning to become good at it, so that's something that has gone pretty well...

...Also, my iPod Video has arrived this morning, and I've got to say I think it's fantastic. Okay, so there was a brief period where I played with it and thought "meh you've seen one ipod, you've seen 'em all", as I'd already got an ipod nano, but this one is so much better. Once you get used to the size, and round the fiddly roundabout way of getting videos onto the thing, it's actually a pretty cool device to have to hand, so I'm definitely pleased with it. Okay, so it's got a fair few scratches on it (I bought it second hand, got it for £102 instead of the £149-£229 (hell of a difference depending on where you go!!) that various places charge for new ones. Who cares about scratches, when at best, I got the iPod AND the postage, at less than half the price of a new one.
The sound quality is great, the videos are crisp and colourful, it's an absolute pleasure to use. Err - that's just my personal thoughts, not a review or anything, though if you want a review, I strongly recommend this one - it helped me decide to buy mine!

Hmm, what else has happened. Well, I've got paid!!! This means that I've been spending more and more time on ebay, buying all sorts of things. Got a nice new armband/ipod holder sorta thing on the way so that I can run and listen to music at the same time. Also got a new leather case for the ipod so I can keep it protected when I'm not running around, and got another game for my Gameboy Advance - yes, GBA, not sony PSP - why? Because despite my obsession with gadgets and gadgety things, I'm a child of the eighties folks, born in 1985, and I wanna play the games I grew up with, hehe.

So what am I doing now? I'm sat chilling, listening to Eisbrecher on my ipod at a very loud volume, as well as this fantastic tune, converting some videos for the ipod (the main complaint most people have about the ipod video is that it supports about 4 common file formats - WMA, MPEG and AVI not among them - which makes converting videos a bit of a pain in the butt - but still...) for it, I'm browsing ebay looking for more stuff to buy. Might play Simcity again soon, and I've got my run later too.

Well, I spose I'd best go and do some of that stuff - sorry that the post's a bit disjointed - it's hard concentrating when you're listening to loud Eisbrecher!
Just to say, thanks for the comments - it's good to know people are reading :).
I'll keep you all updated, as always.

Take care

EDIT - 7:53PM: OUCH!!! I just tried to eat something, and it was next to impossible. I couldn't open my mouth fully without feeling like someone was jabbing an ice pick in my jaw, I couldn't chew my food properly cos I couldn't put any pressure on my gums, and it took me about three times as long to eat what I was eating (weetabix) than it normally does. The pain which could at the time have been described as "absolute agony" has since faded to being merely "extremely painful", and is continuing to fade, but I can't face soup for all my meals for the forseeable future, nor can I put up with this amount of pain indefinitley. It didn't even bloody hurt on tuesday, so what the hell's going on? :(

And so it begins...

So I went to the interview...

I woke up about 8amish, which was fine for an early afternoon interview. Spent a while just kicking back, having a cup of coffee etc, generally chilling out, watching the news and waking up. I decided that I'd best get a move on, and started on my shoes - I've had enough experience to know how to make them sparkle, and I figured I was gonna do myself proud...

As time went on, everything that could go wrong did go wrong. The polish that I coated the shoes with the night before, cracked, and the crumbled polish rubbed the newer layers of polish right off the shoe. Got to get it back to bare leather and start again, but no matter how hard I tried, the problem was there and wouldn't go away - I got madder and madder, tried to brush the excess away only to discover that the only polishing brush in the house is now absent...
Anyway, over the next hour or so I just got insanely mad and my blood pressure went through the roof, as the time for the interview loomed closer.

I managed to get all my clobber on, went to the hair place, and got my hair cut - the damn woman spent more time playing with the kid there, than cutting my hair [and I spose I would have too, if it was my kid, and I wasn't in a rush]...

Anyway, like a great example of bad planning, I made it on the last bus into town before my interview, which got snarled up in traffic, where I practically ran to the carreers office, hurried upstairs, at 1 minute past the interview time, and walked... ...into a practically empty office.

I was waiting 15 minutes listening to some cadet yodelling on about how he's next in line for corporal or whatever, and barely managed to keep my mouth shut. This kid sounded like just the type of walt who would expect real serving soldiers to follow his cadet-corporal orders. I remembered back to my cadet days - I spose at the time you take your cadet-corporal rank bloody seriously, not realising that everyone apart from the kids that you're commanding, think you're an idiot. I spose it's only when you join the army or the reserves that you realise how much the army hate the cadets for trying to be something they're not...

anyway, sorry for getting off topic, cadets just boil my piss. Like overzealous scout troop leaders, taking what little power they have far too seriously...

I went in and had my interview with the sergeant which was pretty cool. The purpose of the interview is for the Army to look at me and decide whether it likes me as a person, and believes I am suitable for recruit training/service...

It went pretty well, and there weren't any hitches. Apart from one: My work had agreed to provide me with a reference, without telling me that it's also their policy not to comment on individual employees - the sergeant presented me with a piece of paper, where every single box was marked with "N/A". Something to be sorted indeed...

At the end he said that apart from me needing another reference, I had passed the interview, and he had no hesitation in forwarding me to the ADSC - The Army Development and Selection Center. This is described by the staff as "one 36 hour long job interview", where I go away and spend a weekend with the army, complete various assessments, take my medical, and if all goes well, get a date for starting REAL training.

So the interview went fantastically, everything was great, and I passed with flying colours - go me! Well I say all was well. I went to ask the sergeant a question about a form I'd filled in for him, and I'd stuck a little note to the front of the form to remind me to ask him. Well as I was asking him, I pulled the note off, and it was stuck on so well that it ripped part of the front of the form, eliciting a loud "shit!" from me. Well the interview was over by then anyway but I still glanced at him guiltily, hehe...

So now it begins. I've got the references I need, having had a micro-chat with my boss. I've got the exercise plan that the Army gave me, on my wall, so I know what I need to do in the next four or so weeks, to get fit for the ADSC assessments, and I've got my revision CD out so I can practice maths.
Yes, that's right, maths. See, one thing the sergeant also did was make me make a decision on which one of my three job choices I want to do the most. The one with the most vacancies, the one that pays the best, the most varied one and the most rewarding one, is that of Vehicle Mechanic.

"Wait", I hear you say. "You don't need to be in the army to be a mechanic". That's right, you know. But Mechanic is my trade, not my job. When I'm not out in the desert, fixing vehicles that have been damaged by combat, I'll be alongside the units that operate the vehicles, fighting alongside them - obviously, there's no use for a soldier who does nothing just because there are no vehicles to fix - so I'll get my fair share of combat too. When I'm not fighting or fixing vehicles under fire, I will prolly be fixing them elsewhere. Soldier first, Mechanic second, as the army website itself, tells you.

so yeah. I've bought a new 30gb ipod to replace my old 4gb one. Okay 30gb isn't much but I don't have 10gb worth of tunes yet, nd I wanna take all my music to phase one with me. It's 14 weeks away from home and I don't wanna be without my tunes.
The only thing that can go wrong now, is my medical. In the words of my GP, I don't have any medical problems that would make me unsuitable for military service, that I am aware of, but it always seems to me, that the more value you place on something - in this case, the chance of a carreer in the army - the more chances are, you will lose that something...

Only time will tell, until then, I' know what I've got to be getting on with.
Let's hope like hell, that all goes okay.

Full steam ahead...

Okay, not much has happened really - I've got chatting to one lad from my town who also wants to go into the army - while he seems to look at me as some kind of older brother figure (he's 18, I'm 22) or something, we get on pretty good, maybe we should go running together or something. Seems a cool enough dude...

Well anyway, on a completely random topic, I don't know if I've mentioned hay fever in the past, but I used to think that I was suffering badly from hayfever - it has been absolutely horrible, and I've been miserable because of it. To be honest, I was scared that the allergy would blight the rest of my life and make benig a soldier very difficult indeed.
Well recently it seems to have been getting worse, so I've been on a couple of medical consultation websites, and apparentl, I am showing all the symptoms not of hayfever, but of sinusitis - which I am genuinley PLEASED about.
Why the heck would i be pleased that my sinuses are all wrong? Easy. If I do have Sinusitis, I don't have hay fever. And I don't have hayfever because I was so annoyed about not knowing that I got a handful of cut grass and practically shoved it up my nose - no reaction whatsoever...
So hopefully, I'll have some antibiotics and I'll be fine again for another 18 months (I seem to get it every 18 months or so)...

On an even happier note, my parcels from ebay are on their way, Hopefully I'll get back and I'll have my copy of Lemmings for my gameboy advance, and I'm also hoping that my copy of "Simcity 4 Rush Hour" turns up - I'm a big simcity fan and rush hour would make the game even better!

And finally, we come to my discipliniary.
I don't feel that I represented myself particularly well. I had a list of the offenses, the details of how I completely mishandled the situation, and the reasons why I should know better, stacked against me one after the other. I figured that I was gonna get booted out for sure, so being nothing except honest, and resigned to my fate, I responded to every single point made, not with bull or excuses, simply with reasons and explanations. "Yes I did mishandle the situation, here is why I mishandled it, and this is how I saw the situation. Yes it does look bad on paper, and yes it was stupid, but this is how and why it came about". I still knew I was toast though, particularly when I got back after the recess, and she started explaning just how seriously my transgression was viewed, and how there were calls for serious action to be taken :(.
With this in mind, she told me that;

"I have no choice but to...
...issue you with a verbal warning"

What? Eh? So I got to keep my job? So it seems. Apparently my arguments were taken into account, and the person holding the interview understood the situation from both points of view.
Fantastic. And now I only work four days a week, my job will be even better!

So I'm in a good mood - I've got the sergeant's interview later this week, let's hope I do as well there...

Thanks everyone, see you soon!

Employment trouble...

Okay, so regular readers of the blog - if I have any regular readers - will be aware that I work a call center monkey's shift in a nondescript run of the mill call center. In the past, I have exclaimed about how much I hate it, how much of a monkey's job it is, and how anyone who chooses to stay there voluntarily would be wasting their life.

Well it seems that someone has thrown a spanner into the works, because I may be having to leave the job earlier than I had intended - a combination of several factors, including the fact that my displeasure at my job shows in the tone of my voice when dealing with the idiots i have to talk to, , as well as one offence (which I am guilty of, as is every single one of my colleagues) which I can't name, as I have yet to have my discipliniary hearing.

So the next few days could go very badly for me. While I have an interview with the recruiting sergeant next week re: the army, my shins are giving me trouble again and I may well end up having to defer entry until they're healed. So it's a bit of a mixed bag at the minute, I don't know whether I will get to keep the job I have, whether I will lose it, whether I will get my job in the army, or whether I will be refused, and I don't know how long my legs will take to heal.

So it's a bit mixed up at the minute, hey ho, here's hoping things improve soon.

Gonna have my face drilled off! (thanks Eddie Izzard!)

WARNING: The following entry concerns a surgical procedure carried out upon myself by a dentist, and goes into graphic detail to describe my experiences during said procedure. If you have a weak stomach, or are averse to long posts, please do not read on, as you will not like what follows. If you don't mind long posts, and find pain and suffering amusing, or if you're just plain curious, read on! I've tried my best to make it funny. It is a bit of a long post, but hey, bear with me okay?

PART ONE - THE OPERATION

PROLOGUE:

Right I'm in less than a fantastic and raptorous mood, because in about twenty five minutes, I have to lay down in the dentists chair, and trust the dentist to - using wickedly sharp compressed air powered tools, not to mention "forceps", which is a fancy medical term for PLIERS - remove one of my largest teeth without killing me, giving me a heart attack, and hopefully, without putting me in agony.

As you can imagine, I'm not looking forward to this one bit, though admittedly, my appointment is only twenty minutes, so I sincerley hope that she can do everything she needs to do in that time...

No, contrary to the first paragraph, I have complete confidence in my dentist's abilities - she's a lovely woman and she's been my dentist for years. Doesn't mean I have to like having teeth pulled out though. Still, I'm sure she'll at least make the experience the least unpleasant that she can, and I do have things to do tonight, so I know there is life after death, so to speak, but it still scares the hell out of me :(.

Well, I'm gonna sneak away now, got to get this out of the way, and besides, the sooner it's done, the earlier I'm medically fit, and the earlier I'm able to eat on both sides of my mouth again :).

Ciao, see you soon!
(I hope!!!)

UPDATE - 16:45

Twenty minutes? Pulling the tooth out? Ha, how naive I was...

Okay, so I forced myself to walk into the dentists with the air of a soldier on a movie who forces himself to stand in front of the firing squad. I spent a good 20 minutes just sitting about waiting for everything to be ready, and then I get called in.

"Can I ask, I know you're the dentist and you know best, but isn't there any alternative to the tooth being removed?" Says I, in a slightly quivering voice...

"Absolutely none, I afraid lovie" she replies, "There's no chance at all of saving that tooth".

Okay, fine, well that's my goose well and truly cooked, and my mind registers the fact that at some point in the imminent future, I will be undergoing some not inconsiderable amount of discomfort. "Still", a voice in my mind pipes up, "You're not gonna make a good soldier if you're too much of a chicken to sit in the dentist's chair". True enough, so I wander in, sit down in the chair (also known as "the vinyl upholstered chair of pain and prostration", possibly hereafter also referred to as "the chair" or perhaps "the electric chair") and resign myself to my fate - the feeling of complete helplessness balanced only by the knowledge that I'm in good hands. I've got my traser watch on, mindful of the times when I'll be out in the field, cold and soaking wet, months from now, as well as my chain, that I've worn to all the best all-nighters - two powerful symbols of the outside world, there to distract me from the terrible reality (oh aren't I being melodramatic - humour me, I'm the one with the farking great big hole in my mouth!) of what is about to take place...

I lay back in the chair as it starts reclining, and I try to get comfortable - which on the dentist's chair is a little like putting a coat on to keep dry on the Titanic. Out of my peripheral vision, the dentist appears at my side with a small cylinder. She takes the front - what appears to be a small cap, of sorts - off it, and to my horror, reveals a FOUR INCH long needle (hereafter referred to as the "spikey needle of death"). Crikey! If this is the anaesthetic, then can I have an anaesthetic BEFORE I have the anaesthetic please? Anyway, said needle disappears into my gob, and I get the tinest twinge of pain as it disappears into my gum, before getting an odd scrapy feeling as it seemingly bounces off my tooth. Next thing I know, the pain increases and she's shooting me full of loads of this stuff (hereafter referred to as "the befuddling poison of sleepyness"), some of which splashes out of the hole and all around my mouth - god it tastes horrible!

Having decided that one is not enough, especially when I seem to have swallowed half of it, she sticks another one in me, this time, into the inside of my cheek! "Okay that's fine-hmm, errrr, ARGH" I think, as this stuff is blasting at high pressure into my cheek - not the greatest experience, and definitley not pleasant...

"Okay lovie, have a quick rinse, wait outside and i'll see you again in two minutes".

I sit up, grap the cup of mint mouthwash, and start swilling it round my mouth while thinking "2 minutes? if that's not the worst of it she'll be lucky if she sees me ever again, never mind two minutes". However, the anaesthetic was quicker acting than I had realised, and with one half of my mouth - including my cheek, half asleep, I can't close my mouth properly. I try not to look guilty as I accidentally spit half a cup of mouthwash out of the half-numb side of my mouth, watching the jet of mouthwash arc halfway across the operating room. Well, glad that we're onto a good start!

Anyway, I go outside, glad to be out of there, if only temporarily. I get chatting to a rather nice woman in the "I-don't-know-you-but-i'm-scared-and-need-someone-to-talk-to" type manner. It turns out that she's having a tooth out as well, so we have some common ground. I slur my speech a bit, poke my gums with my finger nail, giggling at how little feeling there is, and we have a nice chat while the dentist is busy victimising somebody else, until time rolls round, my name is called, and I walk back into the torture chamber.

Now the dentist was a very straight-to-business type person, and despite her excellent bedside manner, there wasn't time for us to arse around. So again, the chair reclines, she pulls the overhead light above my head, her assistant pulls the instruments towards me before putting a surgical blue bib around my neck (hereafter referred to as "the blood collecting bib of pain") and as I feel a slight pricking sensation in my wrist, my vision goes blank and I lose conciousness.
Okay, so I lied about the pricking sensation and the losing conciousness, but in an ideal world I would have been sedated. Can't blame me for wishful thinking. But hey, if I hadn't have had to undergo the horrors of the next 30 odd minutes, you wouldn't be reading this now, would you?!

I start glancing round, wondering where the Elevators and Forceps are, as I can't see any, not that I'd know what an Elevator looked like, though I vaguely imagined it as something shaped like a square, with sharp hooks on each corner and maybe a screwthread on either side.
She reaches for a device like a needle bent at 90 degrees, with a handle on one end, (hereafter known as "the pointed skewer of justice") and it disappears into my mouth, as I feel a tiny little point of pressure, and then two teeny tiny twinges of pain. "Did you feel anything lovie?" She asks. I admit that the second two times, I felt a tiny little amount of pain, but she quickly puts me at rest - or at least tries to, by telling me that "If it wasn't numb, you'd have shot out of the chair screaming", or words to that effect. She puts the skewer down.

"Right lovie, I think we're going to break this up" she says in that soothing i-will-try-not-to-inflict-inhuman-suffering voice. "Break this up?" I think, "We just started! Oh wait, my tooth?! YOU'RE GONNA BREAK UP MY TOOTH?!" She reaches for something shaped vaguely like a nail punch (a long, blunt, metal spike - hereafter referred to as the "crunch punch") and pokes it into my mouth, before (and i'm sure there's a technical term for this) ramming it around. "You may feel a bit of pressure", she says, and with the first of many sickening splintering crunches, I hear/feel a huge chunk of the crown of my tooth breaking off. Even with anaesthesia, the sudden snapping of the tooth sent an unpleasant shock through my jaw, if not my skull. She lifts out something small and off-white, and drops it into a tray. Then back into my mouth with the crunch punch.

So she's there rooting around, and I feel my mouth forced open by the manual pressure, as again, another chunk of my tooth breaks off. She puts the punch down, and leans in with a cotton ball (hereafter referred to as "the blood soaked cotton balls of redemption"), before lifting it out, in front of my vaguely alarmed eyes (I would have said horrified, but I was already resigned to my fate), red and dripping with MY BLOOD! *Bwahahaha (evil laugh)*, then back in with the punch again. This is repeated maybe between half a dozen and a dozen times, as the small pile of blood soaked cotton balls of redemption mounts up. Mercifully, all goes quiet. She confers with her assistant, and they happily agree that that is the crown completely removed. Over? Not a chance!

Next come the roots. She selects a different tool, that looks like a smaller version of the crunch punch (hereafter referred to as "the screw punch of scrapy evil"), and starts drilling around in my mouth - in my lower mandible (!) with it. As the crunching and snapping increases, accompanied by my quiet (but increasingly common) grunts of discomfort, she happily explains "What I'm doing now is removing your roots, this is like removing a wall plug" (basically to remove a wall plug, you screw into it until the screw/tool is in good and tight, then use brute force to pull it out against it's will!). I can't remember whether my reaction was one of apathy or fear, I think I was too preoccupied by the crunching noises.

Eventually she gets tired of screwing up my mouth and asks for the one tool I DO know the name of - the Irrigator! Hereafter referred to as "the curved spiky spear of water". She shoves that in my mouth, and I believe it is used to squirt water into the cavity to clear out all the crap. I say "believe" because at some point I felt a very similar sensation to that caused by the spikey needle of death. Her assistant gets out the tiny dentist's vacuum cleaner, hereafter referred to as "the life sucking cleanser of fragments" and pokes that in there too - now I like the fragment cleanser, as it didn't actually cause any pain itself, so that was good.

Anyway, she's there hammering away, and I hear "Hmm, this last root isn't coming out". UH OH! Fantastically amazing, great! I'm laid on the electric chair in the torture chamber of death with blood gushing out of my mouth (a major exaggeration to be sure, but I still wasn't happy), my tooth in about 15 bits next to me, a huge hole in my jaw, and something's gone wrong!!! Oh great, this is real Apollo 13 stuff here. Anyway, I keep myself in check and put up with increasing amounts of pressure and screwing and scraping and pushing and shoving, and although there's no pain, I can FEEL there's a metal spike rooting around in MY JAW, and I'm laid back listening to the radio...

Her assistant puts the plastic glasses over my eyes (hereafter referred to as "the plastic protectors of the witnesses of suffering") and she comes out with the compressed air (or is it water) powered drill ("the buzzing mechanical hornet's sting of death"). Out comes the fragment cleanser again along with the mirror on the curved handle ("the curvy shaped revealer of pain"), and she goes at it for a bit trying to get the last bit out.

Anyway eventually she decides that it's stuck in there good and proper, and it will have to be left in there. She wanders over to the other side of the room and leaves me to poke the hole with my tongue. To my alarm, the hole is huge and my tongue practically ends up in my jawbone.
Coming back, she inserts a small roll of gauze ("The bloodied gauze of coagulation") and asks me to bite down on it to stop the bleeding. I'm sat there like an idiot for the next 10 minutes or so while she types up the report on her computer, and then she removes said gauze and invites me to stand up - optimistic, considering what I've just undergone...

Anyway, she prescribes me some antibiotics, and sends me up to the chemist. My head is in the clouds, unable to accept that the crunching and splitting of bone that I can STILL hear is just in my imagination.

So now I'm on antibiotics and painkillers and lucozade, and I look like I have some type of psychological disorder now as every time I try to drink I have to do it on one side of my mouth, occasionally dribbling like there's something wrong with me, but hey, thank god it's over...

I never want to have to go through that again. If you learn only one lesson from this long rambling diatribe, let this be it: For Christ's sake, take care of your teeth!!! (sorry lexi) .

Anyway, now we move on to chapter two!

PART TWO - PRACTICAL DENTISTRY FOR BEGINNERS!!!

Modern dentists use a wide variety of tools these days, the majority of which are designed to cause pain and suffering, in the hopes that this will teach you to look after your teeth in the future. Of course, dentists are merciful, and after causing a certain quota of suffering, they will of course, fix the problem, considering you to have learned your lesson.
In the article above, I pointed out a good few instruments used by dentists in their quest for healthier teeth, and I would like to give in further detail, a description of those instruments, as well as basic directions for their use.
So without further delay, let us begin with:



2:1 - INSTRUMENTS OF SUFFERING

• The Vinyl Upholstered Chair of Pain and Prostration! - This highly manoeverable chair is powered by electric motors, and is designed to allow the victim to be comfortably seated, and therefore better able to concentrate on, and appreciate, the suffering about to be inflicted on him/her. The chair is also designed to present the victim in such a manner as to be completely vunerable to the dentist's ministrations, and to render him/her unable to protect him/herself.

• The Spiky Needle of Death! - This wickedly sharp device is used for pumping large quantities of anaesthetic into the victim. It takes the form of an incredibly long, shiny and very pointy needle. It is designed to withstand being poked into teeth accidentally.
  

• The Befuddling Poison of Sleepyness! - This foul tasting elixir is injected into the victim prior to torture commencing, to reduce their level of suffering to a level which while extremely unpleasant, is not unpleasant enough for them to attempt to cause the dentist physical harm.
  

• The Blood Collecting Bib of Pain! - This bib is of itself, harmless. However, it has a profound psychological value, as when it is tied around the victim's neck, the victim immediatley assumes the worst, and is driven to succumb to fear.
  

• The Pointed Skewer of Justice! - This device is long and pointed, curved at 90 degrees, and has a handle at one end to allow the user to exert greater pressure on the subject. It is designed for ramming into people's roots, and testing their pain reactions.

• Crunch Punch! - This device is perhaps the wickedest implement of all. While not sharp, it is used to mercilessly snap, crunch and otherwise crush the teeth of the victim in a merciless manner. Sometimes, there is no substitute for brute force, and the Crunch Punch, allows the dentist to exert their physical strength, as well as their will, upon the hapless victim.

• Blood-Soaked Cotton Balls of Redemption! - These harmless little fuzzy balls have a profound psychological value - they are used to soak the victim's blood up, and can be "accidentally-deliberatley" dangled in front of him, to show him how much blood he is losing.

• Screw Punch of Scrapy Evil! - This device is on par with the Crunch Punch, for its pure evilness. It is used to grind and scrape and screw into the fragments of the victim's shattered teeth, prior to pulling them out, forcibly.

• Curved Spiky Spear of Water! - This implement is often described as an "Irrigator" in the victim's presence, this is done to lull them into a false sense of security. In reality, it is a wickedly curved and very sharp needle, that can be "accidentally-deliberatley" driven into the victim's cheek, gum or tongue.
  

• The Life Sucking Cleanser of Fragments! - This device has no torture value, existing merely to remove water/debris from the mouth of the victim, prior to further pain being administered. As such, it is not sharp, not curved, and doesn't even make a nasty noise.

• The Plastic Protectors of the Witnesses of Suffering! - These devices are deceptively simple, yet powerful. They prevent debris from falling in the victim's eyes, allowing them to see clearly the manic grin of the dentist, as he/she inflicts further suffering upon them.

• The Buzzing Mechanical Hornet's Sting of Death! - This device emits a high pitched wail, and as such, has a profound psychological value. In reality, it causes little pain initially, but can be used to drill holes extremely deep into the victim's teeth. While time consuming, this implement rewards its user's attention, by causing untold agonies to the patient.

• The Curvy-Shaped Revealer of Pain! -This device has little use, causes no pain or distress, and exists only to allow the dentist to see which bits they haven't yet drilled into oblivion.

• The Bloodied Gauze of Coagulation! - This is perhaps the kindest tool of all. Self administered by the victim, the gauze prevents bleeding, and reassures the victim that now their punishment is complete.
  

PART THREE - EPILOGUE

So I'm sat here now, with no more than a dull ache in my jaw. Dosed up to the eyeballs on Paracetomol and antibiotics, and reflecting on what a hell of a day it's been. Root canal work is nothing on having one of your teeth smashed up while it's still attached to you, I can tell you.
I suppose given the tone of the rest of the post, it's about time I gave the dentist the credit she deserves. While I have spent a good two hours writing this (yes really), poking fun at dentists, and jokingly accusing them of being sadistic torturers, the fact is that my dentist was extremely friendly and reassuring, and went to every length to make sure that I was kept informed of what was happening to me, why it needed to be done, and what she hoped to accomplish. While the fact remains that today's procedure was extremely unpleasant, thanks to the dentist, it was nowhere near as unpleasant as I had feared it would be, and for that, I am grateful to her.

I hope you enjoyed the blog more than I enjoyed the procedure it describes - well, you could print the blog out on sheets of rusty tin, roll the sheets up, set them on fire, cover them in acid, and then stab yourself in the eye with them, and STILL enjoy the blog more than I enjoyed today's dental work...

Still, have a good day, and remember - look after your teeth!

Update: 10:11 AM, the following day...

Okay, so it's been about 18 hours since the operation, and I've got to admit, I've been recovering quicker than I expected. So far, there is no bleeding, and the only time I get anything more than the tiniest twinge of discomfort from the tooth socket is when the Ibuprofen (pain killers) start wearing off.

The hole in my gum has closed to about half of its previous size, and it's pretty evident that the healing process is underway. I can now eat and drink, albeit on one side of my mouth, but I'm assured that after another couple of days, I should be able to eat on both sides.

The sounds of splintering bone have started fading from my mind, and while, as predicted, they DID disturb my sleep yesterday, I'm pretty much over it now. When I get home I'll start in with the saline irrigation of the area to clean any of the crap out, and hopefully healing will continue on course. Things are going pretty good.

Update: 04:00 AM, Sunday July 8th, almost a week later...
Right. I have to admit, I'm still recovering from the extraction, it is a fairly mixed bag - but for anyone that's going to have an extraction - PLEASE read on, because it's not as bad as you feared... Just as a tooth cavity is a subject of almost compulsive tongue-poking, the same can be said for the now substantially healed hole in my jaw.
The gum has nearly finished closing over the cavity, with about 1mm gap towards the front of my mouth, and maybe 3mm at the back, all there is is a sleek triangular hole through which is clean, visible, PAINLESS bone.
I can now eat anything that takes my fancy, which is nice. There is no pain any more, just a mild twinge of discomfort every now and again - the gum equivalent of an itch if you like...
...anyway, it's well on the way to healing, and the extraction continues to fade into memory :).

Widespread Flooding and Lucozade-proof Keyboards!

Wow, what a crazy week all of Sheffield has had.

For some random reason, we have had the most rainfall over the city in the shortest space of time, since record began. I'm not talking umbrellas and hiding in bus shelters, I'm talking cars floating away, rivers bursting their banks, and power blackouts. Unfortunatley, other areas have been hit bad as well.

It's been absolutely insane, with property damage likely to run into tens, if not hundreds of millions. Four people have died, thousands are homeless, the power companies have instituted rolling blackouts to fairly divide power between those that have connections to their properties - some are still off the grid.

Buses, trams and trains have stopped running, a large section of the M1, the main highway between north/south England, was closed outright for fear of a local dam bursting, and flooding the road. Things are returning to normal - ish - now, as the fire crews etc are beginning to get on top of the thousands of callouts they've had in the past few days, but according to the weather office, worse is yet to come, with more heavy rain and thunderstorms predicted in the coming days.

My family, have had a mixed bag. The house I live in with my parents is on a slope, so we've not had any flooding at all. Thankfully, I'm glad to be able to say that we're safe, and we're dry, as is our home. My sister and nephew fare well, with no flooding reported over there, but my brother and his other half have not been so lucky. They're living in a hotel right now, as they lived right in one of the hard hit areas, right next to the stadium. My brother's always been into his electronics, and If he hasn't taken the precaution of moving his stuff off the floor, well... It'll take him years to recover financially. He's always been into his gadgets, tv's, laptops etc, and I hope like hell that he hasn't lost a great deal, but I fear that my optimism is misplaced - the area was hit pretty hard. He's not even lived there for a year yet, they got the place together, and they've been flooded out. I suppose life is like that sometimes, but it's still crap.

The worst I personally have had to cope with, was an eleven mile walk home from work, when the buses stopped running. It was kinda weird, it took me over three hours, up and down hills, through several villages, which in places were flooded up to waist height - I have to admit, seeing as I was only a visitor to these flooded areas, there's something fun about wading through the flooding, getting wet, getting muddy, almost like being a kid again.

But it wasn't all laughs, because while there were plenty of times when I needed to wade through the water (soaking my brand new saucony running shoes in mud and silt I might add!), I also had plenty of opportunity to see the less fortunate residents, sitting on top of dumpsters, garden walls, wheelie bins, anything to get out of the water, which in many cases had flowed right into their houses and destroyed a great deal of what they had. TV's, DVD players, cars, sofas, fridges, ovens, dishwashers, motorcycles, you name it, anything that sits on the ground, would have been destroyed by the water. I tried not to think about it, but thinking back, I saw a lot of destruction with my own eyes as well, and I realise that for all the "fun" I had, this really is no laughing matter.

The stadium as I say is totally flooded, Meadowhall was severley damaged by the flooding, right smack in the middle of a 75+ million renovation. The mail sorting office - the mail's central hub in Sheffield, is several feet underwater - all that mail destroyed, letters, never to be delivered, parcels probably in too bad a condition to deliver...

I have to admit, this post wasn't meant to be this downhearted. It was originally meant to make people smile, or laugh, but I guess we have been hit pretty bad, and with worse to come, there's a lot for a lot of people to worry about, and to be sad about. So many people have lost so many things, and for everything to return to how it was two weeks ago? It will probably take years.

Anyway, moving on...

We're (my parents) are having a new front door fitted. Yay! Front door! We've always wanted one!
Okay, so it's not a big deal, but it is for me, because after a night of chilling out watching SG1, drinking beer and chatting to my pals, I end up going to bed at 4am, half drunk. I then had to get up at stupid o-clock (7am) to wait for the guys to turn up to fit it. So I'm here, playing about on my comp etc, keeping myself amused, drinking a nice big glass of lucozade, to keep myself awake. I start drifting off anyway, and all of a sudden my phone goes off with that damn loud Suni Clay ringtone. I jerk awake (no laughing at the back!), half leap, half fall out of bed, and knock the remaining half pint of lucozade straight into my £70 damn logitech G-15 Keyboard. My phone goes silent, as the lucozade starts dripping out of the bottom of the keyboard, it's clear the damn thing is filled up, and is more than likely screwed up past the point of no return. The house phone goes off, and I am not in the mood, so I ignore it, while I spend the time happily swearing, throwing bottles of lucozade about and swearing some more. For good measure, I throw some more stuff about and swear a few more times.

I answer the phone, after it goes off a second time, and it's my dad, like a kid at christmas; "are they there yet, are they there yet?!" I firmly tell him that no they are not here yet, and thanks to him I've spilled half a pint of lucozade in my keyboard, to which he replies "I don't think so".
Anyway, I come back in here, seething, and start sorting the mess out.

The G-15 is a feat of keyboard engineering, really, it's a fantastic piece of kit.
It's also held together with more screws than I've ever seen in one keyboard before. It's like a russian doll, you take one casing off and there's another beneath it, then one on the back, and then one behind that. It's also got a cunningly designed feature - a slot shaped hole in the top of the keyboard, that from what I can see, is specifically designed to allow any fluids spilled on the keys, DIRECT access to the electronics inside, instead of making them have to seep in somewhere... Anyway, even though the G15 is probably the best keyboard on the market, this is the stupidest "feature" I've ever seen. So I spend a long long time cleaning the thing to make the damn thing work.
I'm not gonna bore you, because the bloody thing has just started malfunctioning again, flashing up "USB device not recognised" errors at me, but basically it didn't work, now it does, sorta, and all is mostly good. Mostly.

Damn technology. I hate it.

Anyway, I'm sorry that this blog has been cut short but now my computer is going haywire!
I will try to add more once it stops screwing up!

Have fun, I'm about to kick the hell out of this thing!

Is this summer?

Well, I've been lazy, as you've probably noticed. I have to admit, I had been prepared to let the whole blog thing be quietly put to sleep due to an overwhelming lack of interest, but after a chat with a close friend, I've agreed to update it, so Lexi, this's for you :).

Anyway, what's new? Not much I spose, I still loathe my job, I mean I always did, but now it's becoming really intolerable. Dealing with people's stupidity day in and day out is breathtakingly tiring and boring, and while you might think that working animal welfare would be a gratifying job, it really isn't as I spend most of my time dealing with silly complaints, calls from people who have made a non-situation into a life threatening situation simply through misplaced care and affection - someone warmed up a baby animal that she thought was cold, by placing it under the grill, for pete's sake! These people are absolutely incredible! Where did they get these people! Did they get dragged out of some kind of looney bin just to make the lives of my collegues and I that little bit harder?! -

Anyway, I've decided the job is so intolerable that after months of dithering I've decided to go and join the army. There are a lot of reasons for this, not only including the fact that I was in the TA/reserves when I was younger and it was the best time of my life - it felt good to be doing something real, there's also lots of other reasons along the lines of "helping my countrymen" and "doing my bit" as well, that I'm not going to go into for fear of sounding incredibly cheesy.

My fitness has improved considerably and I've actually taken up running. In fact I've taken it up so vigorously that I've given myself shinsplints - damn! But hey, I'm keeping myself busy, working on upper body stuff, and that's coming along really well

I've lightened my mood (and my wallet!), by buying myself a pressie, a nice sparkly Traser watch - I've always wanted one, so I figured I'd get one. I've also bought myself the exhaust for my bike and my engine rebuild kit, in total I've spent almost a grand in the past two months, my bank account is pretty much hemorrhaging (is that how you spell it?) money, and my financial security has all but gone to hell, so when the 26th rolls round, I'll be pretty grateful :).

Anyway, yes it is a bit disjointed, but so is my thought process. I'm going to carry on getting fit, I MAY make an effort to keep this updated once in a while, and I'll definitley let you guys know how the thing with me and the Army is going.

So until then, take care of yourselves, I don't wanna see anyone having a bad time okay?

PS Lexi, I'm looking forward to my food hehehe ;).

Ouch! More than a little...

Okay so over the past three days I've had a dull ache in my lower right side, it's been getting progressively worse, and yesterday I'd decided to go to work today and mention it to them, seeing if I could get some time off to go and see my doctor...

Unfortunatley, things haven't worked out that way, and less than 40 minutes after getting to sleep, I wake up again in agony with a sharp pain shooting through my abdomen. I try to get up - pain. I try to lay down - pain. And we're not talking a dull ache - it felt like I'd been stabbed.

I can't walk properly, can't sit down or stand up, or rotate my other body - I can't even cough of breathe properly, without this pain appearing again. So I've phoned work up straight away, told 'em that I've got to get down to the docs ASAP - they were cool with it, so we need to see what's going on...

*Edited, 12:35, after visiting the clinic*

Well, I'm relieved to say I don't have appendicitis. What I do have is a torn stomach muscle. While I don't need to go to hospital and the problem will resolve itself, what this also means is that there is no cure or no quick fix, for what is currently an excruciatingly painful injury.

Still, I've got a few days off work out of it - I'm not workshy at all, but everyone likes time off.
Even if they have to share it with an injury like this.

Merry Christmas?

Well, we had the Sheffieldbikers christmas do the other day, which was pretty good, we all had lots to drink and denis got lots of shooting for the video done. Loads of beer was drank and lots of music was danced to, it was really cool.

I went to work on saturday, worked two hours of what I thought was an eight hour shift, only to be told that I had in fact booked the day off some six months earlier and had completely forgotten about it - not helped at all by the fact it wasn't on a printout of my holiday days. So I went home and had a nap.
I also got my bike on the road, after finding my keys in the stupidest of places a while ago. I was fortunate enough to get down to see my brother yesterday, but unfortunatley for me, my first ride out in months was on a freezing cold day, on the day the local team happened to be playing at home, resulting in massive tailbacks. While normally a bike can sail through traffic, the traffic was very severe indeed and I ended up sat in the middle of the road freezing my nuts off. Anyway...

My bike is all back on the road, just in time for christmas, and I've got a lovely sparkly purple (why did they choose purple?!) tax disc to fit onto her tomorrow, as her one and only christmas present.

My fitness continues to stay generally adequate although I am becoming progressively less skinny. Don't get me wrong if I lay down I can see my ribs, but if I'm sat up, I can't see my belt buckle very well. Time for some more exercise I reckon.

Well I've just said bye to my cousins and uncle and aunt, that side of the family, after spending a good 45 minutes showing off my computer to my younger cousins. Before that though, we've had a fairly decent family day - my nephew, sister, brother and brother's partner all came round, at which point I was conscripted into various family activities, such as baking with my nephew who has now learned to count up to 19 - admittedly once he gets past 12 he counts 16,15,19,14 but hey it's more than I did at that age. Probably.

Now these guys have a little christmas tradition, whereby every christmas eve, they send a dude round dressed as santa, on the back of a sleigh being towed by a pickup - not exactly 9 snorting gliding furry reindeer, but we always told my 2 year old nephew that this was because they were just sleeping ready for the long flight tonight - I think he bought it. Anyway, me and my mum, sister and brother's other half (sister in law or...?) came along to see this, and to take my nephew to see it, where he always gets given a brief audience with "santa" concluding in, in this case, a "chomp" chocolate bar.

Anyway, I was rambling on a bit there, but I suppose I'm winding down after a fairly pleasant family day, looking forward to tomorrow and in true christmas-eve fashion, not tired at all. So tomorrow we'll be doing the usual, might go out for a ride on the bike, but first of all I want to see my nephew open the presents i've got him - err, I mean Santa's got him. If he caught me saying that he'd be horrified hehe.

So now I'm going to go and do other random stuff, might grab some food, might get a drink or whatever, I fancy a nice bath and then going to bed. Looking forward to waking up tomorrow and spending a nice, well, pleasant-ish day with the family. If anyone is reading these blogs, and I'm not so certain that they are, while tomorrow will probably have been and gone long before you get round to reading the latest instalment (!), I hope you have/are having/had a very nice Christmas '06 too.

Merry Christmas.

Yet another harebrained Idea?

Damn, I really need to write more on this thing...

Well, in the past month I've turned my work life around. It took a one to one meeting to get me to do it. My boss's colleague dragged me into a meeting room and tried, manager-style, to find out what was wrong with me, and why I wasn't performing.
I gave my honest opinion I guess, I was totally honest, and totally frank.

"There's no point working mate. I don't want to be here, I don't need this crap, It's just one bloody thing after another. Every damn thing goes wrong and a thousand little things annoy me from as soon as I get into the car park, right up until I get out of here, nine interminable hours later..."

And he says "You know what? You're right. I used to hate working here..." He really gave it the "but give it a go and you'll like it" treatment while I sat there thinking "yeah whatever"...

But I tried it, and it worked.
A second meeting followed, with my immediate boss, where I agreed I'd try my best to turn my flagging performance around. And yeah this is where I say that I performed badly and disappointed everyone? No. I became a superstar. I've got certificates, cans of beer, all sorts of random gifts to prove it, so now I know not only am I actually good at my job, but I'm very good at my job.

Which is a shame, because I'm leaving.

That's right. I'm packing the job in, come 2007 I'll be gone. Why? Because I've had a few revelations at home, seems things aren't as secure as I assumed they were. There are a few major changes in the pipeline, and it seems to have returned our family to the question of income and expense. I was offered a choice:

I stay: and help my family out by increasing my rent a little to cover some additional costs (nowhere near the money I cost my parents in bills, food etc...)

I go: Follow my heart, back into the Army, where I had some bloody amazing times, getting myself a new life in a different job, with different people, in a different county, maybe in a different country, AND I'd cut more than a third off the running costs of this place.

So I've decided to go. I'm using my gym privelidges at my current job to train for my new job. I'm on a diet, I've quit smoking, and I'm down in the gym every single day. When I feel ready, I'm gonna go and join the AAC.

I've never been more excited. It's a brand new carreer with brand new mates, and a totally new way of life. I'll get to work with the WAH-64 at some point if I'm lucky, and even if I never make pilot, it'll still be damn good to get back into the fold...

So that's what I'm training for now, that's what I work towards, as much as I can....

Hope to keep you updated...

A long time has passed...

Wow. It's been a while since I put up anything on here. Why?
Well mostly laziness on my part. I got my new system up and running, which is okay.

To be honest, I've left the blog for so long that I can't remember many important details, but I'll give a brief summary;

I'm at the tail end of a 10 day holiday from work, my system has proved every bit as good as previously hoped. I've become increasingly disaffected with my job and am now seeking new employment opportunities.

In other news, work's speed humps snapped the exhaust on my bike. I am getting it repaired and am of course seeking legal advice, given the fact that I warned my employers that this would happen many weeks in advance.
And I've lost my keys. Like a true dickhead, I've lost the only set of keys to my bike.
I'll laugh about it in a year's time, sure I will. But until then, I face a period of massive inconvenience. Hopefully, my attempts to get the situation resolved will help anyone else in my position.

Well, I'm off to finish my cider. Part of celebrating the last free night that I have to myself.
At least until tuesday, when I'm going swimming with my family, which I'm looking forward to.

Stay safe, or die well.
Life's like that :).

Things are moving on...

Recap: I've spent the past few months buying parts for my computer. I've tried to get some really good stuff and I'm almost ready to build a good spec pc to run the latest games, fast as lightning.
This computer should be assembled by the end of sunday the 30th.

Last night was strange. I was at the horse and jockey, speaking to Ross (the landlord) about my bike, and the general consensus was that the bike would be much better off at the track. After 20 minutes of alternatley ribbing me about the small size of the bike and its unsuitability to be a roadbike, and then praising the bike and telling me how fantastic it is and how good it looks, we got onto the subject of racing. At which point Ross made me a surprise deal.

He wants to pay to take me and the bike to cadwell park . He wants to pay the track fees, my fuel etc, everything. He wants to ride the RS round the track for a session. Then he wants me to do the same. If he beats my laptimes, I get a free trackday, no expenses at all.
If I beat his laptimes though, he wants to sponsor me, in his capacity as a mechanic. He's basically saying he wants me to race, and if I can beat him, he's gonna be my mechanic. He's got connections in the business that can sort me out with tyres, fuel etc...

He's said time and time again that he's twice as old (he's 42), twice as scared, and twice as slow, but I just reckon that that's "sense of security" stuff, and I don't come close to believing that bit.

Course, I've said yes, and the only question is when. I'm excited and scared at the same time, but if this works out, it could be what I've always wanted. Yes, he's practically offered it to me on a plate, but I've spoken to his other half, and his friends, and apparently he's deadly serious.
Maybe he knows I won't beat him and has nothing to lose, maybe he just wants to get his hands on my RS, or maybe, he wants to break into the racing business again. Who knows...

Anyway, I got paid yesterday, and today's been spent giving the bike the care and attention it deserves. I went to SMC motorcycles in Sheffield, and ended up buying a bottle of 2 stroke oil, a bottle of gear/transmission oil, and a bottle of brake fluid.
I also bumped into my mate, Den, and I convinced him to ride back to mine to help me replace the RS's fluids.

The journey back was fun, not too much traffic, some decent roads, and one really good bit where I overtook a car that decided to pull out closer to the middle of the road, forcing me to ride down the middle of the opposite lane. When a white van was coming towards me! I screamed past the car and I think I must have gone over a bump or something, because the bike launched about a foot (30cm) into the air while I was doing about 70mph, and landed with a bump and a bit of a wobble. I was so proud! I felt like rossi, it was great!! Sure I came damn close to being killed, but I didn't hit anything and I got one hell of an adrenaline rush.
Course I was nowhere near hitting the van and the journey continued, AND den got stuck behind the car, which wasn't my intention, but was funny.

We got home and changed all the bike's fluids, the gearbox oil was a fun one, when I ended up getting my hand covered in massiveley hot contaminated black gear oil. So that was a messy job, but not as messy as changing the brake fluid! wow!
Denis sat on the bike and pumped the lever while I kept the reservoir topped up and tweaked the other end of the brake line close to the wheel. At several points I forgot to close the bleed bolt, and air got into the system, and we had to start again, but we both made a mess of it really, with Denis vigorously pumping the lever trying to force the air out of the system (the bleed bolt was closed at this point so air wouldn't have been forced out as it had nowhere to go), and being taken by surprise as a shot of brake fluid shot all over him. I think his comment of "When I pump it, it spurts on me" was just what I needed, having already been amused by earlier antics, and we kinda accepted that neither of us were master mechanics. Still, we got the fluid changed. Den got fluid all over my bike, I got it all over my drive, but a fun time was had by all.
Shame then, that he rode off and left his stuff here! He's gonna need to pick that up.
I went out and tested the brakes on a nice little local run, I was out for about an hour, and it was fairly nice just to be riding round again.

Well, like I say, my bike's tanked up and ready to go, and tomorrow my AMD 4600 dual core processor and my 1gb of xms3500 RAM arrive, and on sunday, we put the computer together, and I'll be able to play my games on a really cool really powerful system.

Hopefully, the next time I write up, It should be on my new system. Either way, I'll keep everyone posted :).

I'm off out to drink my cup of tea, have a smoke, and figure out why the police helicopter is going loopy over my area.

Take care all.

Psychotic dogs and diesel smoke!

Well, things have changed in the past few days, and I have to say, things seem to be looking up, loath as I am to admit it.

A few days ago, my parents came back from B&Q (a DIY/hardware store) with a small box containing no less than a dozen 8mm fuel line connections including 2 T pieces. Not only were they sitting right under my nose (we looked everywhere except B&Q!), but they cost under £2, compared to the £6.76 for the one from Aprilia which *Still* hasn't arrived!

So I've been back on the road for a few days and me and the bike are settling back into our old routine. In fact, we're closer than before, and thanks to the summer sun warming my tyres and the road, I'm confidently pushing her harder than ever before. And she just takes it and takes it. She's that good.

Still, after spending the day sitting round, watching tv, chatting on MSN etc, I decided to go out, down to Ship Hill in Rotherham to see if any of my old pals were about. So about 10pm, on go the leathers, and carrying my lid out the door, I get the bike niceley warmed up.
I get no the bike, eager to go on only my second night-ride since the bike broke down 8 weeks ago, flick the switch and the road in front of me illuminates under the glare of the headlight. Great, we're in business.
A quick ride down to get some petrol/gas and some ciggs, and up to Rotherham I go.
It was weird, riding round there for the first time in 8 weeks. I ride up past the police station, and hear the thumping music from the clubs nearby, see the revellers falling over or laughing and telling jokes, see lights swirling inside the clubs. The taxis fill the air with diesel smoke and as a couple of scooters ride past, two stroke smoke leaves it's distinctive smell, while the merest hint of weed smoke seems to underlie the whole thing.
Damn, I'd forgotten what the place smelled like.
I do a couple of laps of the hill, none of my mates are there. No one really to talk to, just a couple of pedbois and 40+ modified car owners, so I head off back home.

Riding back home, I stop at a junction while a guy goes past me on the main road. Course I pull onto the road behind him and head back towards home. I quickly realise that the guy in front is going so damn slow, sticking to the speed limits like superglue. The road widens out and I pull towards the center so I can sea past. There's another car coming towards me but it's fairly far away, I'm confident I can make it. Just before we approach some roadsigns in the center of the road, the road widens further and I see a chevronned do-not-drive-on-these-markings markings on the road. I indicate, and pull out behind the guy, start to overtake and I see the damn fool indicate right, too. What the hell is he playing at?!
I kick down another gear, scream past him, onto one side of the chevrons and almost into the center of the other lane while the oncoming car starts flashing his lights at me. I duck back in just in front of the car, and while my heart's still racing, the idiot just pulls off the road into his driveway. Damn fool.

I'm approaching the next small town on my way home, and I see something fluttering about in the middle of the road. No sooner do I wonder what it is than BANG, it hits me just under my left collarbone with an impact that made me wince. "What the hell was that? A Bat!?" I think. So I pull up in a nearby car park to check myself over for, I dunno. Blood? Fur? Feathers?
Nothing. Damn thing was probably something like a hawkmoth or something. Shame to have hit it really, they grow pretty damn big and live for about 2 years!

Still, I manage to get back home and ride down to the bottom to see if the kid with the motocross bike's out. His bike's there but he isn't. I turn round, and as I'm doing so I see a smallish dawwgeh (doggy=dog) wantering around forlornly. I finish turning round and there's no sign of the owner, so I pull up fairly close to him and stick the bike in neutral while he looks at me expectantly while wagging his tail. Now I work in animal welfare so I know if this guy's not reported found then things are gonna look pretty bleak for him. "Hey little guy" I mumble at him, and no sooner do I get the "He-" out of my mouth than he goes psychotic! Barking, waving his tail like crazy! He calms down a little but starts edging towards me. I fix him with my gaze (just what you're NOT supposed to do to nutty dogs, in hindsight) while I calmly and slowly reach to the clutch lever and put the bike back in gear, expecting him to have another go. He starts another barking session and edges closer. His barks get louder as my engine revs up, and before I realise what's happening, we're both accelerating up the road, him chasing my back wheel, barking all the way up to around 25mph before he starts dropping behind. I scream up the road at a fair rate of knots and pull into my drive, thinking to myself "some dogs just don't WANT to be helped!"

So I sit on my front doorstep, having a smoke, cooling off after taking my jacket off. Listening to the traffic in the distance, the splashing of the neighbour's garden fountain and the tinkle of some wind chimes somewhere.
"No matter" I think, "what happens, I've always got my bike. And If I haven't, at least I've had tonight".

Riding aside, I'm getting pretty excited about my computer. I just can't afford to get the 2GB of memory AND the CPU, but I'm not going to go another month without my new computer while this one continues to throw hissy fits and suffers the PC equivelant of multiple organ failure. I'm gonna get one gig, and the CPU, and maybe next month or the month after, I'll get another two gig, giving me a whopping 3 gig in my new system! Every little helps!

So Now I think I'm gonna get ready for a little sleep, maybe have another smoke, and try to wake up bright and early for work tomorrow. I've got to admit, I'm not entirely horrified by the prospect...



Take care.

Back on the road!

Well after a few mediocre weeks, during which not much has happened, I've finally got the parts I need to get the bike back on the road.
They've been fitted and the bike runs beautifully. Course, I haven't taken it for a run yet because I'm still recovering from a bit of an all-dayer (like an all-nighter, but I woke up late), but tomorrow I think I'll be spending some quality time with the bike.

My hard disk has arrived, I opted to get a 250gb 7600rpm drive, on the basis that A. I can't afford a 74 gig 10k rpm raptor at the minute, and B. I need to move more than 74 gig of stuff onto my new machine when it's up and running.

My sparkly keyboard is a real pleasure to type on, and looks pretty cool. I'm only a CPU and some RAM short of having my new system up and running. Everything I need is here, just ready to be put together. On the downside, I seem to have started smoking again, but that's only a temporary thing, I don't predict it'll last long once I'm signed up at the local gym.

See ya round.

And on we go...

Well, not much to report, life goes on.

I got my keyboard delivered though, and my Graphics Card - I decided on a Geforce 7900GT, which while not the best on the market by any means, is still pretty mean and for £180, you know it still means business.

Other than that, nothing important seems to be happening.

Nothing to report...

Life goes on...

...predictably, my motherboard arrived, no sign of the keyboard, which was kinda a good thing I guess, because in hindsight, it gave me the £30 I needed to survive to the end of the month (survival is relative - I could have survived, but I would have had to do it without food)

Still, life goes on, not much changes... My part from aprilia still hasn't arrived. It's pretty much a given that I'm not going to get it. The local garage have been ever so helpful, with the staff digging into their own pockets and going through their own garages to see if they can find a part for me, but short of ordering from a fuel line/connector specialist (which aprilia isn't), I'm not going to get my hands on one.

So the bike's still off the road, and my computer's now sat on top of my wardrobe.
Still, it's not all bad. I've got off my arse and finished putting up the rest of the posters round my room, so the place looks pretty cool now. Not a massive deal, you might think, but hey, since I spend most of my time sat on my butt in my room, I might as well make it look cool.

I figure I'm not going to be able to meet the cost of the computer in its entirity this month, so I'm going to split the cost over two months. Which not only means that the cost is easier to meet, it also means that I'm able to get marginally better components.

I still need to get the hard disk, I've been talked into getting a 10k RPM raptor, which is hella expensive with not much capacity, but I'm advised it'll be worth it.
I hope so - I just wanna get this damncomputer business over and done with. I've got other things that I want to do with my life and my money.

Still. I got my magazine from London today, it's got my article which I wrote printed in glorious colour, looks pretty good. There are a few edits on it which I wasn't advised of, a few bits missing which I'd rather have had kept in, especially considering the editor and I worked together on revising it, several times, but ultimatley, it's his magazine and it's cool to see it in print.

Still. I'll let you lot know when there's something in my life worth talking about. I wish I could sleep, until there was, but sadly, I don't have that luxury...

Another Pothole on the Road to Success!!!

Oh great, time goes on and things get worse.
Yeah folks, sorry for my less-than-great mood. I shouldn't really be so cranky, I've had an okay couple of days I guess.

I've been saving all my tips for ages and ages, from when I worked for Pizza Hut all those years ago. Damn, three years feels like nothing. That's a terrifying thing at 21. Course, the bigger coins got spent on all sorts of stuff, but the small change, 2's, 1's, 5's, occasional 10's just got put in loads of cash bags and languished in my wardrobe for the best part of three years.
Well I figured out I could get all my change together and take it to the local ASDA - they've got a machine there that counts small change, issues you with a voucher, which is then redeemable for cash. So I take along a year's worth of small change, a massive bag of coins weighing about 15 pounds (rough guess).

What do I get for just under 1700 coins?
21 quid. Great.

Still, I managed to have a decent time swimming, as per the usual monday. I can feel my fitness beginning to come back to me.

Today was a pretty standard mediocre day at work. All the phones were down, all the computers were down, and for the best part of six hours, they paid me to sit there and wait for them to get the systems back up.
Still, I managed to get home, have a little nap, and then went and took some cash out, ready to buy my motherboard and my new keyboard for my computer. We went to overclockers, which is the best place to buy the stuff, but ended up having a load of trouble with Natwest's new security forms which we HAD to fill in, with no explanation. This worried my dad enough to cancel the order cos he didn't want to give his details again. Well we both looked into it and he eventually made the order without telling me, and forgot the keyboard.
So we've had to tack on a message basically saying "can I have a keyboard too!" - they've confirmed the order for the motherboard, but not the keyboard. So now I'm probably gonna get the motherboard and no keyboard tomorrow - great, when a lack of communication means that the item I actually NEED rather than one I'm just getting to reduce costs next month, probably isn't gonna be sent.Still, At least we got part of the order confirmed.

I'm still waiting for the fuel T-piece to get in from Italy, so the bike's still off the road too.

Still, i've got a day off on thursday as I say, and in an attempt to lose weight (yeah I'm only 11 stone but my body fat has gone from around 9% to 19% in 5 months - worrying!), instead of drinking beer tomorrow I think I'll be after some cheap whisky or something. Not that I'm an alcoholic of course, but I have been pretty stressed.

Still. Life goes on. Not to say that it gets any better, but ya have ups and downs, ya know.
Take care people.

Time marches on...

Well, it's been a vaguely interesting few days. A relatively unremarkable 3 day break from work seemed to turn into something possibly worth mentioning.

Tuesday night was pretty cool, turning up at my local bike pub, ready to see the do that Ross (the landlord/owner)'s put on for us. It turned out to be pretty damn good, a bouncy castle for the kids, a BBQ for the lads, even a beer caravan in the back car park saving us the trip to the bar.
They had live wrestling which was pretty cool to watch, scripted or not, and the best part, 3 seperate live bands on a stage in the beer garden.
the place was pretty full, and the inside of the pub was packed, there was even a tatooist inside the pub performing his work, gotta say, after a few pints, the temptation to get an "Aprilia" tattoo was more than a little strong - glad I didn't though :).

The party was fantastic, the third live band was definitley the best, playing a load of original material, sounding distinctly like Iron Maiden, I was pretty impressed with the quality of the music being shown off, and surprised that these dudes didn't have a contract already. Course at the minute, the recording industry is filled to capacity with identical emo american youngsters screaming about skateboards and stuff. Bullet for My Valentine springs to mind...

But hey all that aside.
My computer parts arrived today, I woke up early this morning after another night on the beers, waiting, looking out of the window, for a delivery van - just like a kid waiting to see santa on Christmas Eve or something. My waiting was rewarded, and just before lunchtime, a guy pulled up to deliver my Power supply, my Case, my CPU Cooler and my Lightscribe DVD/CDR/RW writer.

Course, I instantly unpacked everything, drooled over the PSU for a bit, then finally decided to bolt everything into the case straight away - not only does it save time later, I also wanted to play with my new toys - even though my computer isn't yet taking shape, at least now I have the case, I know what shape it will be.

I've got to get the computer running as soon as possible, I did a load of overtime earlier this month, so the money there will be useful, but with the advent of PhysX technology, seems that's even more money to spend, in addition to the fact that I need to rebuild my desk in order to be able to even fit my PC on it - the case's a little bigger than my trusty old 1.8 system, so i need to upgrade. Good old Ikea.

I need to get my hands on that system soon though, It's not my fault that I can't wait, just because I'm a god at need for speed Most Wanted, I need a system that can actually handle the damn game without slowing down or crashing every 30 minutes, a system that doesn't give me time to grab a beer while the loading screen idly flickers by...

Anyways, I finally got my throttle cable for my RS back today. It was promised that it'd be ready for wednesday so I figured I'd get it this afternoon. Got in, and the idiots there didn't even remember me dropping it off. Such a massive lack of communication that no one realised it was supposed to be done yesterday - yes I know it's a bit of a cliche, but it's true. They gave it back to me after I waited there, arms crossed, scowling, for it to be done. I got as far as my mum's car, before comparing the new and the old, and noticing that the new one had been screwed up again!

I went back in, and the dude assured me that it'd fit and it'd work, so fair enough. I got home, and did it fit? The politest answer, and not the one at the tip of my tongue is "no it didn't".
Me and my dad ended up soldering the damn thing ourselves, jury rigging it, so that it'd fit and it'd work, and guess what, it does! My dad's a superstar!

So I'm siphoning petrol from my NSR back into my RS so I can go out for a razz, and I figure I'd spill a lot less petrol if I used some fuel line from my RS. So I grab some of the fuel line and try to pull it off the T-piece going to the carbs. No joy, so I give it a solid yank. *SNAP*.
I stand there for two seconds while I replay one side of the plastic T piece snapping off in my hand through my mind a few more times, and once I've got my mind back up to speed, I let loose with a steady stream of expletives. Those things are not common, and Aprilia seldom take less than about four months to get spare parts to their customers (an exaggeration, but you get the idea), so I happily and constructiveley spend the rest of my afternoon strutting around the drive, throwing a wobbly, shouting and swearing.

So now the throttle cable is fixed, but if I turn the fuel tap on, it'll pour petrol all over the damn floor. Sometimes owning that RS is the best thing in the world, sometimes it's the hardest bike to live with. Until I get another T piece, the bike isn't going anywhere.

Still, my holiday is at an end, I'm back at work tomorrow, and contrary to my expectations, I don't miss it one bit, and I'm not happy to be going back...

Still, best get going.I need to sort something to eat, and I need to get back on Most Wanted...