Eight days a week

I've been house-sitting for the last couple of weeks, which basically meant free broadband, free Sky+ and the chance to get out of work early (as opposed to waiting around for a lift). Unfortunately I'm not house sitting nay more, which means my evenings are about to becp,e far shorter again.

In order to increase the amount of time I spend away from the office I'm thinking we need a third day at the weekend, something to put off Monday for another 24 hours.

I'm sure with some thought it could be done - there may be some degree of fiddling with calendars required and it may cause confusion for animals that hibernate or don't have calendars (such as otters, who famously don't have calendars in their little otter houses) but I reckon it'll be do-able.

I'll have a think. Hmm, maybe decimalisation is the way forward....

General ramblings

It's been some time since I last posted, which I put down to excessive tiredness caused through working too hard and not being able to get a decent nights sleep due to having the coldest bedroom in the country. Luckily a friend has gone to the States for a holiday so I've got a nice warm house to kip in, so I can finally sleep.

It's strange how much a lack of sleep can affect you. You'll be sitting in the office, pretending to work and suddenly get hit by a big wall of tiredness, and the next thing you know you're shaking from too much caffiene and snapping at anyone who so much as looks at you. Admittedly it can be quite amusing watching people jump as you shout at them for daring to approach you during your lunch break but even that small pleasure gets boring fairly quickly.

That's a point, why is it that you can be sat at your desk with a burger, chips, a pack of crisps, a can of coke and people still come up to your desk and say "oh, are you at lunch?" - it's crazy. I feel like twatting them around the head with something, maybe a wet fish or a baguette perhaps, and shouting at them. The worst thing though is that, once you've explained that yes, you are at lunch and you're not eating all that food as a light snack, they still ask you to do stuff. I'm going to write the dictionary definition of "lunch break" on my white board and refer people to it from now on...

Oh bollocks, I've just realised I missed the sodding rugby. Damn it!

I've just checked the score, glad I missed it now

Anyway, I think that's enough random rambling bollocks for today. Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.

How much??

As I write this I’m in my room at the Marriott hotel in Leeds, killing ten minutes before I inevitably decide to go and sit in the bar and have a nice cold pint. There’s a box on my desk that I can plug my laptop in to in order to access the internet at broadband speed.

I thought this was marvellous, just plug an Ethernet cable in to the PC and the box and surf away, all will be grand. Until I decided to log on that is. In order to use the service you have to pay a charge, which I was prepared for. What I wasn’t prepared for was the fact that the minimum amount of time you can buy is 24 hours, which costs £15.

I’ll be posting this entry to my blog when I get back to the office.

Harpoons for recreational purposes

Ever had one of those days where you just want to buy a harpoon and shoot people? Today was one of those days, so I decided to see just how easy it would be to get me a harpoon…..

It’s actually fairly easy. After a quick search for harpoons using Google I realised what I actually needed to pin people to walls was a spear gun. A quick search later and I’d found a supplier of spear guns offering some fearsome looking weaponry for less than £200.

I saw a lovely model (shown above) which was 1.2m long and looked like it could take down a whale. I’m looking forward to seeing the face of the guy who works in the post room downstairs when it gets delivered to my office.

Cat and Chips

First off, a quick update. You may remember I mentioned in an earlier post the large cat that’s apparently been spotted in the local area. For the last few weeks there’s been a debate raging in the local rag as to whether it exists or not (really, some people have nothing better to do – you’re reading this aren’t you?) and in this weeks edition they’ve printed a photo of the thing. Hopefully now people will accept there’s a fucking big cat roaming the area, but somehow I suspect the debate will continue for some time to come.

Right, that’s beast watch over. Let’s move on to something else that’s been in the news this week, albeit on a different scale, chip and PIN cards. According to one national newspaper the country is about to be thrown in to a state of confusion as shops start to insist on shoppers using their PIN instead of signing for their purchases. The paper in confusion actually said, and I kid you not, that the introduction of PINs has caused an “information overload”, and that because of this people can’t remember their codes. Now, I’m not being funny here, but I fail to see how having to remember a four digit number (which in a lot of cases is the same as the code these people use at the cash point) is information overload. Maybe peoples’ brains are getting smaller. I shall find out and report on my findings in a future post.

The worst thing (as far as I can see) about chip and PIN cards is that I’ll now be forced to listen to an increased number of morons asking me for my “PIN number”. Do people not know that PIN is an acronym for Personal Identification NUMBER? It’s a PIN, or at a push a PI number (which could lead to confusion unless your PIN happens to be 3.142).

A chilled beer

Some dude in east Asia (I think it was Japan but I can’t swear to that) has invented a self-cooling drinks can. Let that filter through your brain for a second. Chilled beer, anywhere, with no need for a fridge. Open can, wait 15 seconds, drink cold beer. Festivals will never be the same again, parties will be bereft of the usual arguments between man and woman about what fridges are supposed to hold, and you won’t have to suffer two warm cans when you get back from the supermarket with a new slab. It’s like somebody has invented Heaven and worked out how sell it in off licences.

The best thing is it costs all of about 1 cent more per can to produce than a standard can, so it’s not as if it’s unfeasible either.

I don’t know who the bloke who invented this marvellous device is, but he deserves a hug. Or possibly a Nobel Prize.

Valentine's Day

Meh! I hate Valentine's day, it's the most pointleess day of the year. I did do better than I predicted I would though. Here's the total:

Cards 0
Emails 1
Texts 1

Who says romance is dead?

Swamp thing

I’ve thought of something I’d like to add to my list of stuff to do before I die (I’ve changed it slightly from a list of things I want to do before I’m 30) – I want to go speeding through the Everglades on a swamp boat with a stereo blasting out the theme tune for ‘Gentle Ben’. I don’t know why, it just strikes me as something funny to do.

Online forms

I’m writing this entry from my death bed. I’ve got some sort of disease which makes me ache all over, has given me a headache and is making my nose generate untold amounts of gunk. I’m informed by a female friend that I have a cold, but there’s no way that can be true. At the very least I’ve got flu, although I suspect it’s bubonic plague, or maybe pneumonic plague, I never can remember which is which.

(Microsoft Word has just informed me that the ‘it’s’ in the previous sentence is grammatically incorrect and should be an ‘its’ – hmmm, I think not, I think I know how to construct a coherent sentence thank you very much).

Damn, I’ve (or should that be Ive) forgotten what the topic of this entry was meant to be now. Oh yeah, online forms.

We’ve all filled in online forms, and if it’s for something worthwhile the chances are you’ll be asked for your occupation, and given a long list of professions to choose from. Generally you get options such as IT professional, office worker, banker etc. Usually there’s nothing that resembles my actual job so I tend to choose something generic that sounds about right. I got thinking though, if I’m struggling to choose an occupation, what happens to people who have a really specific job. For example, I’ve never seen an option for Prime Minister. What the hell is Tony supposed to do?

Does he choose civil servant and think “that’s close enough” or does he think “I run the bloody country, the least I can do is boast about it a little”? After all, he may be the Prime Minister but he still needs car insurance and an Amex card…

I really do need to get out more…

The Brain

The brain’s a strange beast. Well, it’s not technically a beast, it’s more an organ, but you know where I’m coming from. But anyway, it’s weird the sort of things it remembers. For example, I know that at any point in time 0.7% of the worlds’ population are drunk, or that if you look at your reflection in the back of a spoon you will see Pete Townsend looking back at you. (It’s true, if you don’t believe me, go fetch a spoon). However, I can’t remember the capital of Vietnam, which is probably a far more useful thing to know (in as much as that I’ve never been asked what percentage of the worlds population are drunk right now, but I have been asked what the capital of Vietnam is).

I’m assuming that it’s not just my brain that does this, and that there are millions of people out there who can name all the different species of head lice, but don’t know the name of the plane that carried the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. So therefore, there must be a market for some sort of brain training school where you can learn to forget useless facts and remember useful ones instead. As there’s a market, I’m assuming it has therefore already been done. However, I won’t be going. Personally I don’t care what the capital of Vietnam is, but I do care that donkeys sink in quicksand but mules don’t.

Can you smell weed?

I read a story in the local paper today about a suspected cannabis factory that had burnt down in the area. Police found plants and weed-growing paraphernalia at the house once the fire had been put out so it’s a fair bet that the place was being used to grow puff. To be honest though, I’m surprised the police needed to find any evidence to know what had been going on in the house. I’d have thought the smell of all that burning weed and half the neighbourhood walking around eating mars bars would have given the game away….

Weird noises

I was just about to start this post off with something incredibly witty but I’ve been thrown by the somewhat disturbing screeching coming from outside my window. I’m assuming a fox was killing something, perhaps the wild cat I mentioned in an earlier post. It’s stopped now, but I’ve totally lost my train of thought, and it’s time for Invasion.

Rant update

I found out today that the release date for the P990i is May 2006. That’s five months away. I can only think of the following reasons for such a long delay:

• There’s an inherent problem with the handset that needs fixing
• Sony Ericsson are waiting for more network providers to roll out 3G services
• Sony Ericsson are bastards and are making people wait for shits and giggles
  

I think it’s the last one. After all, if I made those sort of decisions I’d do it.

A quick rant

It’s time for a rant. This one’s directed at Sony Ericsson, in particular their mobile phone division. It’s not that they don’t make great phones, because they do, it’s more the fact that they make great phones that I can’t buy because the one I want still doesn’t have a release date.

The model in question is the P990i, a truly brilliant little smart phone with every feature you could possibly ask for, and a few extra ones too. I’m not going to turn this in to an advert but suffice to say, it’s a neat little gadget and I want one. I was going to buy the previous model, but it got discontinued the day before I went to buy it. I didn’t think this was too much of a problem, as I expected SE to release the next model quickly. That was nearly two months ago and I’m still waiting to find out when the new phone’s going to be released, let alone how much it’s likely to cost.

Maybe I’m missing something here but I really can’t see what thought processes were behind the decision to discontinue the phone before the new model was ready. The only thing that’s stopping me from going and buying a phone from a different manufacturer is that as far as I can tell the P990i is the only phone that does everything I want the way I want, and I do like SE phones a lot. Oh, and because Motorola’s phones feature a strange quirk in the software that means they switch to their loud profiles when you charge them. Oh, and I have a thing about not owning a Nokia, not that they make bad phones (I’ve had two) but because they seem to be a bit, ahem, “Chavvy”.

Oh my God, I’ve turned in to a phone snob.

Big cat diary

One of the local papers this week has a story about a guy who was out walking his dog and saw a wild cat of some type. The article says that the man in question estimates that the cat was about a foot high and a foot and a half long, and that he thought it might have been a Lynx. All well and good.

The article then goes on to quote a bloke who’s part of the big cat society, who says (and I quote) “This sighting could be that of a Lynx or bobcat….however, Lynxes are about four feet long and this man says the animal he saw was less than half this length”.

So, that’s that then, it can’t possibly have been a Lynx. An expert says so. Now, I’m no expert in big cats (insert your own joke here if you wish) but I’m willing to bet that Lynxes aren’t born fully grown (if they are then fair play to female Lynxes, that must smart somewhat). Maybe I’m missing something, but surely the bloke walking his dog just might have seen a young Lynx as opposed to a fully grown one.

I’m therefore going to put forward the notion that the bloke is a moron and shouldn’t be considered an expert in anything, partly because he’s obviously stupid and partly because I like the idea of ‘The beast of Bexley’ roaming around, possibly hunting stray animals and ramblers.

Headline news

I perhaps shouldn’t make light of bird flu, especially if the press is to be believed and we’re heading for a pandemic, but I couldn’t help but smile the other day when Sky News showed the headline “Bird Flu in Turkey”. I always preferred chicken anyway…

I’m fairly sure there must be people who work for various news agencies who purposefully try to slip amusing headlines in to serious news programmes (getting a pun in to a tabloid rag doesn’t count). I applaud the scamp, again from Sky News, who put a caption on the screen in front of George W. Bush during the hurricane in New Orleans – “Bush: Worst ever disaster to hit United States” – sheer genius. You can’t tell me that was an accident.

I’m sure there are plenty of situations out there that lend themselves to this type of japery. I can imagine a story in a local paper about a new weight watchers club with the headline “New faces all round at Weight Watchers”. If you’ve got any more feel free to add them as comments.

Spam, spam, spam and spam.....

I’ve had an idea. I’m going to create a service that allows people to sign up for spam. Most people hate spam; I’m indifferent as I don’t actually get any in the Email accounts I use, only in my hotmail account which never gets looked at anyway, but I’m willing to bet there are people out there who actually like getting spam Emails.

I’m guessing these are fairly lonely people who don’t get many normal Email messages, and find the feeling of receiving an Email, even an unsolicited one offering Viagra or perhaps the chance to win a holiday, nice. It probably makes them feel wanted.

Therefore, I’ll allow these individuals to log on to my site, register their email address and I’ll then sell the addresses to all the spammers I can find, who can then send junk to my visitors to their hearts content.

I will of course need to ensure that people can’t just sign their friends or enemies up on their behalf, so I’ll obviously send an email out to any registered addresses with a confirmation link (although I’ll assume that delivery is as good as confirmation in order to speed things up slightly).

Just in case anyone’s beaten me to this, and is thinking of signing me up in an ironic sort of way, my email address is: bill.gates@microsoft.com

Oh, and in case that seems vindictive, I’ve just spent the last two and a half hours rebuilding my laptop after Windows decided it didn’t want to recognise my hard disk any more (funnily enough the first time I powered up after running a defrag). Coincidence? Maybe, but I’m blaming Bill

A new year, a new post

It’s been a long time since my last post, and since then Christmas and the New Year have been and gone. I’ve learnt a few things over the festive period:

• TV schedules actually can get worse than normal
• Vodka not giving you a hangover is a myth
• Drinking 7 pints before the office Christmas boat party isn’t the best of ideas
• Family guy is hilarious
• Nicotine patches hurt when you take them off
  

Talking of nicotine patches, I noticed something in the little leaflet that comes in the box:

“The nicotine [in the patch] is sufficient to relieve the unpleasant withdrawal symptoms such as restlessness, irritability, headaches, inability to concentrate, light headedness or dizziness”.

All well and good, you may think. That is if course, until you reach the part about the side effects of using the patches, which may include:

“Headache, dizziness, impaired concentration, anxiety, irritability”

So if I’ve got this right, the majority of the side effects are the same as the withdrawal symptoms you get from quitting smoking. Hmmm, and I paid about £30 for two weeks worth of these things...

It’s nearly as stupid as the system for getting cash out of the ATM using an American Express card. Apparently, if you decide to use your AMEX card to draw cash, the amount isn’t added to the balance of your AMEX account, oh no. Instead, the amount comes straight out of your current account. Oh, and you get charged for it. Seems to me like it’s just as easy, and somewhat cheaper, to use the card your bank provide you for making ATM withdrawals.

So long, farewell..... but only until next year

Well that time is upon me, where I get to leave the office and not come back for more than 2 days. I'm therefore unlikely to be near a 'net connection, unless I decide to take advantage of wi-fi connectivity in my local pub.

That being the case I won't be posting anything here until 2006, although the chances are that I'll still be writing and I'll post anything I do write upon my return.

See you in 2006!

Scams

I’m listening to a story about a woman who fell for a scam in which she was told she’d won the Spanish lottery, and then had to shell out a load of cash in order to claim her winnings. I kind of feel sorry for the woman – I think she’s stupid, but I can kind of understand how she got suckered.

However, there are people out there who fall for the so-called ‘419 scams’, where people receive letters from people asking for British folk to help transfer money out of Africa due to various reasons which all equate to one thing – money laundering. The people who fall for these scams are not only stupid, but they’ve got absolutely no reason to feel aggrieved – after all, they’re greedy idiots who have agreed to perform an illegal activity in order to make some cash.

Many hundreds of people fall for these scams every year, ergo there must be many hundreds of greedy, stupid people out there who can be taken advantage of. Which gives me an idea...

I’m not going to scam people, or try and con them, I’m simply going to ask them to send me their money. The way I see it, asking people to send me the money they would have lost to criminal gangs helps both parties. I get rich, and they don’t have to suffer the ignominy of losing their money to a con artist. Oh, and also the money won’t get used to fund drug trafficking or prostitution, it’ll be used to buy gadgets, cigarettes, beer and a Pagani Zonda F. You may think this will never work, but there’s no accounting for people’s stupidity.