Repeat offender

So I have picked up another speeding ticket. I get the impression that they are probably not going to send me on some wanky drivers education course this time as clearly the last time they packed me off there it didn’t work on account of my getting booked again. But then again last time I went it only served to give me the impression that I was a better driver than everyone else there because they all really sucked.

I am not so pissed off about this time though because I got caught doing a manly 81mph by a stealth radar van whereas last time I got flashed by an omnipotent static camera that I knew was there whilst travelling a scant 36mph, making it particularly irritating. At least this time it was sporting. And I happened to be late for an appointment this time too so I have an excuse (albeit pretty weak) whereas last time I was just being impatient and inattentive.

And the moral of this post is; when you bust through the speed limit in southern Buckinghamshire don’t do it on the A404 between the M40 and the turn off to Maidenhead or in any of these other locations.

Ship breakers

Some fascinating and quasi-post-apocalyptic looking visuals of Bangladeshi ship-breaking yards (via).

Planblog

The internet is replete with vocational blogs; ambulance blogs, train driver blogs, police blogs, washed-up child actor blogs (who incidentally decide to redesign the site when I want to do this post, grrr), doctor blogs, politician blogs, the list goes on…

I can’t find any planner blogs though.

Although I know my blog is not all about planning, and indeed has only relatively rarely touched upon it, I wonder if I am slash could be the first planner with a blog? Perhaps I should do more ‘insightful yet witty incursions into the bizarre world of planning.’

Stats

So these are my stats for the past 12 weeks. I think it shows a moderate rise in visitors until the Christmas to New Year lull but things seem to be picking up more now with an all time record in week two of 161 page loads (ahem, not to be confused with 161 visitors mind). It’s difficult to tell though whether I am getting more hits as none of the indicators of page loads, unique visitors or returning visitors are entirely reliable for various reasons.

It seems that as the amount of content, and particularly outgoing links, on Nick101 increases so do the number of hits I receive. About 8% of recent visits have been from unreciprocated or unknown links. Thus far I have had viewers from the USA, India, Singapore, Kuwait, New Zealand, Belgium (ok that was me on holiday), Portugal and Spain amoungst others as well as my predominantly UK based readership.

Translating this into content; when I started this blog my initial concern was with actually being able to produce stuff to post. However as time went on I became much more relaxed about it as I realised I could come up with quite a lot. Of course now I have hit another worry point as my viewer stats rise; trying to deliver posts of reasonable quality (not sure whether I am doing that at the moment) and hanging on to viewers and chasing the somewhat unexpected goal of getting more hits.

One of the worst aspects is that it can be quite demoralising to put up what I think is a good post and get very few hits that day. I really liked Urban Jungle, featuring PARK(ing) and the cups in wire fence thing which I really thought was fun and interesting, but that day I got virtually no visits at all (seriously it was like the internet had broken that day) and hence Free Music Stuff the following day was a somewhat half hearted affair that ironically got twice the number of visits on the day it was posted.

Of course, this comparison between posts and hits is somewhat academic as I have no doubt that people will read the blog as and when it fits their schedule rather than based on the content of posts which of course you don’t find out until you read the post in the first place. Moreover, just because you visited the blog, doesn’t mean you read it but the stats don’t count that.

How to ruin stuff 101

Requires one perfectly good duvet cover with small holes that need patching, one iron on patching kit (available from Woolworths for around £1.79), one perfectly good carpet, a pair of scissors and an iron.

Take duvet cover, remove duvet blanket and place on large flat area; living room carpet is ideal. Iron area which needs patching. Use scissors to cut iron on patches to cover slightly more than area which needs patching.

Place iron on patches over small holes with some spare fabric underneath to absorb any excess adhesive. Iron over patches for approximately 40 seconds ensuring the corners of the patches are well adhered.

Leave to cool for about a minute. Attempt to remove duvet cover from carpet. Realise that iron on patches have adhered themselves to the top side of the duvet cover which has in turn adhered itself well to the under side of the duvet cover which again has adhered itself to the carpet. Scratch head and re-read instructions on iron on patching kit.

Use brute force to remove duvet cover from carpet leaving large mass of firmly affixed glue on carpet and chunks of carpet reciprocally attached to the duvet cover. Separate the top side of the duvet cover from under side of duvet cover.

Stand back and appreciate formerly perfectly good carpet with two very large masses of glue embedded in it (pictured above) and iron on patches just barely affixed to duvet cover with flappy edges.

Update:

The iron on patches came off the duvet cover in the wash. Ironically, the remenants of carpet stuck to the underside did not. Think I am buying a new duvet cover this weekend.

Seven more

Rejects:

Maidenhead one bed – Nicely decorated flat in period property next to the river, plenty of height to it, not so much floorpsace though, which is where it counts.
Maidenhead one bed – Ok sized but just off the A4 and noisy, has parking but half way across town. Comes (badly) furnished.
Maidenhead one bed – Slightly strangely laid out flat with wood floors. Ok, so there wasn’t anything really wrong with it, it just didn’t feel quite right. Can’t put my finger on it, just not right.

Candidates:

Maidenhead one bed – Good size, right next to the river. Comes part furnished with questionable taste but nothing really wrong with it, a little pricey; paying for river proximity.
Maidenhead one bed – Majorly close to the train station, a little small and a little dated. I was initially put off because the current tenants were, well, filthy but I have no doubt the place would get a decent clean and then it would probably be ok. It’s hard to look past the major ming problem though.
Maidenhead one bed – In the same block as the place I lost out on and a bit smaller (also cheaper) and there really was nothing wrong with it at all apart from the living room was a bit purple.
Maidenhead two bed – A little on the pricey side but a clear winner, comfortable walk to the station, immaculately presented, comes well, but sparsely, furnished which is ideal as I could probably just fit most of my stuff in it too, and the rest can go in the garage that comes with it.

(I think my judgement on the latter three might have been a bit skewed though because the pretty girl who showed me round was unreasonably flirty).

28 (20 working) days later

Caution, this post contains wanky, and no doubt dull, introspective nonsense. However, I have added some arguably unnecessary links to jazz it up a little.

As of Monday I have only four weeks left at my present job. I have been feeling increasingly weird about this as time has gone on although I don’t think its just leaving my present job; fairly big changes are afoot in general with other associated stuff going on at the same time.

I have been dying to get away from my current job for a little while now and, when going to work for the past six months or so, have been thinking ‘why am I doing this and where the hell is it getting me?’ (Answer: don’t know and nowhere, respectively). But now I am going to work in the morning and counting down the days (I have even numbered the days to count down in my outlook calendar) and as they get fewer and fewer the inevitability of some major changes gets greater and greater.

A number of people have commented that I have been bouncing around work with an uncharacteristic level of energy and enthusiasm. In honesty I didn’t notice this until it was pointed out to me however I think I can guess what is prompting it. Even so, my impending departure still leaves me with a degree of nervousness at what is coming next.

I have been with my present employer for three and a half years now. This is, by a wide margin, the longest time I have been in any single job (although I suppose its two jobs, technically speaking) and it is a long time. This is compounded by my moving flat at the same time which I have been in for nearly as long as I have been at my present work. I haven’t lived in the same place for this long since I left London (by which I mean the watered down suburbs of Middlesex) in 1996. And this is where it gets a bit circular as I am going to work soon in a place just a few miles up the road from where I left nearly ten years ago now.

The circular weirdness aside, at the same time I am going to miss doing what I do at the moment because it is familiar and seeing the people I am used to seeing especially as I like quite a lot of them.

Anyway, I’m not too sure what the point of this post is, aside from possibly illustrating a mixture of apprehensive excitement and abject terror about what is to come combined with a sense of relief and nostalgia about leaving.

Would be nice if I knew I had a nice flat to move to mind (seeing five seven more this weekend).

Yooire not frum roound ere

So I had some fun looking up my family name on the surname profiler (via).


Looks like I have lots of namesakes knocking round in Cornwall, Devon and whatever that purple slash redish blob up north is (like Manchester and Derbyshire and stuff?).

I just want a nice flat

Without wanting to turn this blog into a diary of how I can’t seem to find a nice flat to move to I am going to rant about the two places I saw yesterday which were, well, the worst yet by a wide margin.

First I saw round a very spacious crumbling relic of the 1970s. The carpets were encrusted with ming, the kitchen looked like the set from a horror movie in a mental institution, the living room had damp crawling up the walls and the bedrooms looked like prison cells. And it was located above a bunch of take-aways and car repair garage, accessed from some dubious back alley probably best suited for junkies to sleep in and use as their toilet.

The second place was marginally better insofar as it was only a throwback to the 1980s but also felt like an asian sub-continent squat complete with curry house music and a bizarre aroma of incense. The kitchen was also so small that if you wanted to make a cup of tea and a slice of toast at the same time you would probably run out of space.

At both places the agent was very keen to point out that they really would get a thorough cleaning and 'a decent airing to get rid of strange smells' before I moved in. I think they needed a bit more than that though.

This is the 21st century, why are folks trying to peddle me slums?

Six movies

A list of six movies that everyone else seems to think are rather good that I thought were really boring:

Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels
Get Shorty
The Usual Suspects
The first Lord of the Rings movie
The second Lord of the Rings movie
The third Lord of the Rings movie


A list of six movies that I thought were rather good but rarely admit to because nobody else seems to agree with me:

So I Married an Axe Murderer
Pitch Black
Star Wars Episode I – The Phantom Menace
The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3
2010
13 going on 30 (ok, not really but I couldn't come up with a sixth and this happended to be on tv when I was trying to come up with something)

A list of six movies that should be watched at least once a year (ideally with either lots of tea or lots of beer):

Ferris Bueller's Day Off
The Breakfast Club
Die Hard
Any one of the three original Star Wars movies
Alien
The Terminator

Limbo

Ok, so the current tenants of the flat I supposedly had agreed on do not appear to want to leave just yet but I can’t seem to extract whether they are still going eventually and if so when. This leaves me rather cross about being led up the garden path and stuck in limbo land in terms of finding a new pad.

I have resumed flat hunting but can’t find anywhere as nice for an even remotely comparable rent which is both reassuring in that the more I see the more the place I picked appears pretty amazing but it's also intensely irritating as it means I can’t move flats before I change job and it’s unclear whether I get this flat at all. Ultimately it’s all a bit depressing because if I don’t get this one then, unless something else special comes along, everything else is going to be second choice (by quite a wide margin based on experience to date).

So at the moment I am trying to work out whether it’s best to wait for the number one choice or give up and find somewhere else. Because of timescales on starting job and giving notice on my current place I have to decide one way or the other now and can’t do both because if I wait I want it to be somewhere worth waiting for but if I ditch it I also have to find somewhere else immediately otherwise there is no point not waiting. But then again there’s no point waiting for something that I’m not going to get (if that makes sense – it does in my head).

Thus far the other places I have seen have either been nowhere near as nice (for various reasons) but similar in terms of rental payments or comparable in niceness and way more expensive.

Here’s the shortlist of alternatives that I’ve seen:

One bed in Ruislip – right next to tube station and high street but noisy and with no parking.
Two bed in Ruislip – a fair walk from the tube station with the kitchen from Trainspotting and a dubiously giant porno mirror covering one entire wall of the main bedroom.
One bed in Maidenhead – really nice flat with fantastically massive balcony out back but over half an hour walk to the train station which is too far.
Two bed in Maidenhead – student dive looking flat outside a fish and chip shop (which is better than a kebab shop I guess) with a cat infestation, oh, and it majorly smelled of feet.
Two bed in Maidenhead – immaculately presented, great location, unfortunately squeezed into the size of Ford Transit (and not even one of those ones with the extra roofy bit on top).
Two bed in Maidenhead – Kate’s old flat (which makes it a bit weird actually) which is nice but way more expensive. I really can’t afford or justify paying extra for the classier area.
One bed in Amersham – stay where I am and wait and see if I get evicted.

I have another viewing today in Maidenhead and two viewings in Ruislip tomorrow; we’ll see how those go. Heaven forbid I am going to have to start considering looking at places such as Langley or South Harrow (but never Slough).

Free music stuff

I’ve been using Pandora for the past few months for free music. Basically you tell it what music you like and it plays more like it. It also tells you what you like too and now appears to know more about what I like than I do, which apparently is a subtle use of female vocal, disco influences, mild rhythmic syncopation, melodic phrasing, extensive vamping and heavy use of choral patterning. Which is nice, not too sure what that means exactly.

Urban jungle

Car parking spaces are generally so sought after in towns and cities these days that nobody ever seems to stop to consider what else they could be used for. The concept of being able to rent a piece of space in integers as little as fifteen minutes is quite cool when you think about it. Other than parking spaces I can’t think of anything that you can rent for so little for such a variable amount of time with so little commitment. Anyway I really liked PARK(ing) as it was an inventive way of looking at urban space in a new way and putting it to a slightly more beneficial use than just sticking a car in it.

I guess stuff like PARK(ing) counts as modern art, but is refreshing insofar as it doesn’t tout itself as such. I like the interactivity of it too, much like this display of paper cups in a chain link fence.

Maidenhead baby

So I made a rental offer for a nice two bed flat in Maidenhead yesterday morning. I got a ring from the agent in the late afternoon after a painfully long wait all day who said that the landlord had accepted the offer and we could start talking about references and moving in dates and stuff so that is really rather exciting. (Yippee) (photos of the outside are in How much?! and the inside of a similar flat, two floors up, in Phone dump).

In honesty I didn’t have much hope of getting very far with this place because the flat seems to me to be under priced compared to others I have seen to start with, my offer was really insulting (I thought) and having spoken to the current tenants, who are still there so its not like the landlord is desperate for a new tenant, my offer was also like well below what they are paying.

Anyway, so I am pretty pleased with how that worked out as I now hopefully have secured a jazzy new flat with two bedrooms, living room, small dinning room (yeah, check that out, a dining room!) and good sized kitchen. Drawbacks are that it is a little further walk from the train station than I would have liked, no dishwasher and it has electric heating. However these minor points are like really small compared to the amazing amount of space I recon I have got, a nice little garden area, near to shops, a spare room (!) and all for an acceptable rent.

All I have to do now is make sure the landlord gets shot of those current tenants pretty damn quick so I can move in before I have to start the new job.

Of course I didn’t hear from the agent about all this until pretty much the end of the day, five minutes before I was due at two viewings with another agent in Ruislip. So I felt I had to kinda pretend that I hadn’t found anywhere and look round these two shitty flats with this other agent guy because I thought it was a bit late to cancel. Actually it wasn’t that bad because its always fun to have a bit of a nose around and like I say, these other two places I saw were pretty dire (think flowery wallpaper, kitchen off the set of Trainspotting and even worse - no off street parking). I suppose it was worth it really as it re-affirmed my belief that I had picked the right one already.

I am really pleased how this has worked out as thinking back a month or two ago I was sure I was going to end up in some dive studio flat with views of the A40 or Heathrow Airport or a sewage works, or even worse, in Slough.

Burning dependency

Amid the recent turning of part of Hemel Hempstead into blazing inferno of hydrocarbons and the slightly satanic black cloud that lingered over my neck of the woods for the following few days, this article is hardly reassuring. This report of peaking oil production coupled with some alleged convenient lies on behalf of OPEC and chums is not going to make you feel any more comfortable. And just on the off chance that you doesn’t worry you enough, how about this uncomfortable but arguably not implausible forecast.

Firefoxy

So I’ve been using Internet Explorer for years (like since me and the internet met) and despite having tried other browsers in the past (typically various versions of Netscape) have always come back to it.

So, despite having had Firefox recommended to me by virtually everyone and loads of websites that seem to know what they’re talking about I was still pretty reluctant to attempt the switch (you can take a horse to water etc…). Anyway, I gave it a whirl at the beginning of this week and had a play about with it. And to cut a long story short, I am a convert. IE sucks. Use Firefox. And I don’t think I have even scratched the surface insofar as all the stuff you can do with it.

Only one complaint thus far, that being I can’t copy and paste blog posts into Firefox which is a little irritating (not too sure if it is me doing something wrong), so for the time being IE has not been completely shelved.

If you haven’t got it already, download here.

Think I might make that my new year’s resolution actually. Use Firefox as web browser… Check, done.

What the estate agents really mean

What the estate agents said: A well presented, modern, one bedroom apartment.
What they really meant: A tiny flat with wood floors.

What the estate agents said: Internal inspection is highly recommended.
What they really meant: The outside is pig ugly.

What the estate agents said: Excellent access to the train station.
What they really meant: The mainline from London to Bristol pretty much runs through the living room.

What the estate agents said: Ample parking with close proximity to local shops and services.
What they really meant: Located in a bland 1980s housing estate dominated by car parking, miles from the town centre with a small corner shop about half a mile away.

What the estate agents said: Well proportioned apartment.
What they really meant: This flat has a bizarre layout.

What the estate agents said: Sought after location.
What they really meant: Sought after location for chavs and car thieves.

What the estate agents said: Convenient town centre location.
What they really meant: It’s above an all night kebab shop and nightclub and there sure as hell ain’t no parking available.

What the estate agents said: Under offer.
What they really meant: This place is such a shit hole that the landlord has given up hope and decided to flog it instead.

Resolution

So last year my new years resolution was to drink Guinness. Hardly the most challenging task but I never really have been one for the whole new years resolution thing.

Anyway, I managed it and tried Guinness, although it took until about March, so it was hardly a resounding success but I now drink Guinness occasionally and do quite like it.

In fairness last years resolution wasn’t really much of a resolution or even that much of a challenge (which was the point). I hadn’t planned on having one this year but after giving unnecessary grief to the poor waiter dude in the pub on new years day realised that perhaps one particular new year’s resolution would be in order. Namely to try to be nice to the waitress/waiter types in restaurants as I am building up a fairly good track record of being mean to them. This is generally exclusively in situations involving me being hungry and having a hangover and wanting my food immediately and to a standard and with a level of service well in excess of what I was willing to pay for. And, yes, I do feel a little guilty (once fed to my exacting standards) for being mean to these poor people who do shitty jobs for minimum wage on a Sunday morning, no doubt with a hangover and rumbling stomach comparable to my own at the time.

However, lets get real here. When I have a hangover and am hungry I am likely (but not exclusively) to be at my least reasonable and little inclined to sympathise with the catering staff's position when my mayonnaise is not forthcoming with my bacon cheeseburger, my orange and lemonade not having lemonade in it or my side salad not arriving (regardless of whether I wanted side salad or not).

So, really, a new years resolution along the lines of ‘be nicer to the waitress/waiter type people in restaurants and pubs’ is unlikely to have much chance of success. Therefore this years new years resolution is to ‘think about being nice to the waitress/waiter type people in restaurants and pubs (but with no firm or quantifiable commitments).’ I might upgrade it to something a little more challenging in 2007.

Phone dump

A very mildly reminiscent first post to 2006. Here are a few photos captured on my phone camera thingy in the past month together with a bit of commentary where necessary.

Work Christmas do. Somewhere in London. I forget where exactly.

A barn in the middle of a field. Nothing much going here, which was exactly the point of my taking this photo in the first place.

Sometimes I struggle a little to try to explain to people exactly what it is I do all day (besides playing on the internet). Trying to explain why I was taking a photo of absolutely nothing of any consequence or interest is possibly one of the harder things to account for I think.

My brother and dog, next to fire at parents house on Christmas Eve. Yes, very home Counties, blah, blah.


Inside one of the flats I liked in Maidenhead. This is the living/dining room. Not too sure about those light fittings though.

Me and Elenor, News Years Eve, or early hours of morning on New Years Day. A fairly academic distinction really I think.

Not posted: Photos from work Christmas do where everyone looks a little more plastered. The sneaky photo of me that Gem took when we were in Pizza Express that I didn’t find until a week later. Me taking a photo of Elenor taking a photo of me. More photos of that barn in the middle of a field.

That was 2005

Good stuff:

Getting a new job (hopefully)
Going to Lisbon
Two public inquiries and three hearings
Starting a blog
Bng and K8 getting engaged and buying a house
Laura and Chris getting married (twice)
Volunteering for Planning Aid
The new series of Battlestar Gallactica

Bad stuff:

Falling out with friends and family
Stopped caring about my current job
Getting caught speeding
Bumping my car into a bollard (twice) (yes, I kept the second time quiet)
Some other stuff too that I am not posting

Favourite blog posts (in reverse date order):

( ^ _ ^ ;)
Double bookings
Sorry we missed you
Daylight
The hotel of evil

NSFW

Thought I would do these links, which I have been meaning to put up for a while now, when folks are less likely to be at work over the Christmas to New Year break (because they are a little bit naughty).

Read Girl with a One Track Mind.

Play with Orgasm Girl.

Back to work

Hmm, sucks to be me. Back to work already. Not sure how I ended up doing that. I seem to recall thinking ‘I’ll book some time off in the new year and enjoy the between Christmas and New Year lull and avoid the post New Year chaos.’ But I apparently failed to book off much time in the New Year too.

However (thinking ahead) leaving work before the end of the tax year means that four days have been slashed off my annual leave allocation so the remaining days off I have will be most welcome when (hopefully) moving flat time comes around.

Anyway the Christmas break was good. Four days of not being at work and getting yummy home cooked food are not to be snuffed at (and I now have two quiet days in the office before flat hunting recommences). For pressies I got a cook book, a stack of cash as well as the usual array of booze, chocolate, and socks. Sadly no flat screen tft monitor or any other jazzy electronic devices but there you go. Christmas sales were also a little disappointing as I picked up absolutely bugger all.

Hope everyone else got lots of nice stuff too.

(Have also added an emaily side bar thingy for a new way to send abuse and will hopefully keep it, subject to spam robots not attacking me).

A little more festive

Have an excellent Christmas everyone. Eat, drink, be merry, have fun and I hope that everyone gets just what they wanted from Santa (because I am sure you’ve all been very good this year).

Nick101 resumes on 28th December.

As festive as...

I must say I feel a little irked that despite the supposedly festive season my blog has been about as Christmassy as a U-bend (and not even one with sparkly lights or tinsel). I have to confess that I am not the biggest Christmas fan, being unreligious and otherwise pretty cynical about the excessive consumerism of the event. It has its highlights but as with many (but not all) things is best kept in small doses. The Christmas preamble of festivities going back as far as October does somewhat desensitise me to the ‘big day’ and render it somewhat of an anticlimax I think.

In order to try and inject some (arguably needed) festive spirit into the blog I did try to find some festive links to insert but failed to find anything other than a number of similarly cynically minded takes on the event such as Christmas Day with my new girlfriend's family as a circa-1982 text-based computer adventure game.

And that is pretty much where this blog post runs out of steam. However here’s to wishing everyone a happy Christmas.

That was Tuesday

One of the things I have deliberately steered away from in doing this blog thing is to recount in, what would no doubt end up being horrendously boring detail, the things I did today (or any day). For one, I doubt anyone would be interested in that kind of crap (but hopefully I can get away with it this one time) and two, I sure as hell would stop writing it because it would be really boring for me too.

However, I am possibly for the only time, going recount roughly what happened yesterday and document my fairly dull routine because it was a pleasant enough day (albeit uneventful) and fairly soon my routine is going to have to change and it would be nice to have a least some record of what I do, roughly, Monday to Friday.

Alarm goes off at 7:00, although I was awake at 6:30 but still don’t emerge from bed till about 7:20. Kicked off with a morning cup of tea, milk, one sugar. I really should quit the sugar thing but I like the sweetness in the morning (and I frequently and very hypocritically disapprove when I see other people putting sugar in, and wrecking, yummy tea at all other times of the day).

I usually kick off at this point by editing and publishing a blog post but don’t because I don’t feel like it and am not up to much at work so it can wait until then. A bit of BBC breakfast (Dermot and Natasha) and a bit of friends (one from just before Ross got married to Emily) before self cleaning rituals, get dressed, breakfast (banana, few grapes, juice, vitamin supplements), bit more BBC breakfast, remembering to smirk at the loosers trying to commute into London on local news (don’t get to do that much longer).

Leaving flat, try to sneak past crazy neighbours who I try really hard to pretend not to see but have to wave and say ‘hi’ after getting my name shouted at me and a series of whistles and whoops. This is followed by a very rapid de-icing of the car as I try to get away before the aforementioned neighbours attempt to engage me in conversation. Success. Spend more time trying to pull out of driveway (right turn, busy road) than it takes to actually get to work.

At work, exchange a couple of emails including one with Graham (my ex-boss) who is curious about me (possibly slash hopefully) moving to Maidenhead (also lives in Maidenhead). Not too sure if he is worried about me living on his doorstep or pleased to have a new neighbour he will know in the town? Email from Mark querying why I hadn’t done a blog post. Abuse is sent back along the lines of ‘you didn’t manage even one while you were covering the blog when I was on holiday.’ Blog post done next.

Get coffee, do some work. Issues today with some random shipping containers, approximately 1000 square metres of unauthorised storage and a certain reality TV building. Get bored of that. Read Questionable Content and browse del.icio.us (very relieved it is up and running again after crashing on Sunday and being out all Monday too). Bit more work. Meeting mid-morning between me and our very nice landscape girl, Louisa, and this guy about some badly needed landscaping around a two house development that didn’t quite go according to plan (but I won’t go into that now) so there’s evergreen trees and hedges going like everywhere possible.

It was Christmas lunch day in the office where everyone brings in food and drink etc. and folks hang around and chat for an extended lunch which was pleasant. Thankfully very little in the way of awkward management types hanging around (and everyone politely trying to avoid them while they pretend they’re not being avoided and that they want to be there). Saw Megan and children for possibly last time before they head off back to New Zealand after Christmas. Megan gets a hug. Will miss Megan, and yes ok probably the children too, a bit.

Afternoon is kinda dull. Read ScaryGoRound (could the witch that Amy burnt to death in the oven be her mother?). Construct threatening letters to two people with unreasonably bright lights (signage and floodlighting). Bored of that. Talk to Laura about Christmas shopping, Mark about the new Prince of Persia game. Send links to cute overload and some funny smoking thing to Gem and a list of new proxy servers to Andy and Mark to try and bypass work’s restricted website access thingy (none of which work as it turns out).

Get bored. Go home. Take Mark with me as car his car is in the shop and play computer games (Halo 2 and Need for Speed) until he goes to football (assume he got home ok without car).

Dinner is chicken stir fry with red peppers, mushrooms, onion and rice with Teriyaki sauce (should really be beef or seafood with noodles with Teriyaki but I have neither of either). Watch Demolition on Channel 4 – about Cumbernauld shopping centre, god that is a planning and architectural disaster and the representative from the Lanarkshire (?) (whatever) Council is a disgrace.

Get an email from Mike, turns out Kiera Knightly was in Star Wars Episode 1. Hmm, lost that bet then. Thought he had forgotten about it too.

Write (most of) this blog post. Realise while trying to work out how to spell Teriyaki that I have forgotten to put remaining Teriyaki sauce not used at dinner in fridge. Put Teriyaki sauce in fridge. Think about ironing shirt for work next day. Don’t bother to iron shirt.

Watch part of a re-run of Sex in the City, get bored. Start reading new book, High Society by Ben Elton courtesy of Kate, as finished How to be Good by Nick Hornby last night (good book, mildly reflective, can relate to lead character).

Tired. Go to bed at approximately 11:45.

More houses

Amidst my (really rather minor) housing crisis, Bng and K8 move in to their new house today. So big congratulations to you for that guys. I would give you a hand moving in but I am kinda stuck a few hundred miles south.

Anyway, the house looks great, from the cursory external inspection and peering through the windows I got to do. I hope it will be a great house. Of course I am expecting an invite at some point in the New Year…

How much?!

So I have found this block of flats in Maidenhead that I have kinda fallen for.

The block is pig ugly to say the least, being generic 1960s mass produced crap (see photo). Moreover, according to Kate (former Maidenhead resident) it is in the arse end of Maidenhead (although this still seems a lot nicer than Langley and I am not even going to bother to compare it to Slough) and it is a fair chunk of a walk from the station. There are presently two flats up to buy and two for rent. There are only about thirty flats in total in the development so that nearly 15% are up for grabs at Christmas time is hardly a glowing recommendation.

I still like it though which is possibly slightly irrational (or stupid).

I have seen a bunch of flats in Maidenhead now and I have to say what I can afford is more than a little miserable aside from the aforementioned ugly block of flats in the arse end of Maidenhead.

I appear stuck in the infinitely unsatisfactory position of having to trade off commuting time with a nice flat with a decent area with paying to live there and (of course) I can’t afford them all…

Anyhow, flat hunting is now suspended until after new year.

Communication

It has now been three and a bit months that I have been doing this blog thing. Despite getting irked by it on occasion, particularly when I don’t feel like writing anything, it has been a fairly enjoyable experience and feedback has always been really good (but as I think I have said before I doubt anyone would tell me outright that it royally sucked). One of my original reasons for starting it was to try to keep in touch with people and to an extent it has succeeded in that intention, although predominantly in ways that I was not expecting (as with many other things).

The main day-to-day issue that has arisen out of this is when talking to people I sometimes find myself at a loss when people appear to continue conversations based on blog posts. Not that I don’t welcome this. It’s nice to know that people not only read what I have written, but also paid attention and retained some of the merry nonsense that I come out with.

However this can be mildly unnerving from my point of view (but don’t get me wrong, not in a bad way). I do appreciate that people actually read the blog but I never really know how much people have read or remembered and indeed sometimes wonder whether I have had a conversation along similar lines with someone or exchanged emails etc. I don’t really feel I can say, ‘so you have been reading the blog’ because it sounds a little Nick-centric so on occasion end up floundering slightly trying to recall what, if anything, I have posted and how likely this person is to know about it until generally it is resolved with a smile and a ‘yes, Nick, I have read the blog’ (or not).

This can disappoint on occasion though too as sometimes people seem to know more about what’s up with me than I do about what’s up with them leaving me a little on the back foot. It can perhaps seem a little invasive I think to insist on persistent questioning to try to bring myself back up to a level par.

Ultimately really the blog thing is only ever going to be one way impartation of information as folks are unlikely to post feedback comments telling me all about them (but you can do that too if you like). And despite some coaxing nobody else seems to have taken up their own blogging reigns…

Anyway, I guess what I am trying to convey with this post is that I appreciate people reading the blog. That is, as I have said, one of my main reasons for doing it. And I think I would now be slightly upset if everyone stopped reading and my enthusiasm would probably go out of the window.

So thanks for reading folks, please keep coming back (in spite of the weak posts) (yes, yesterdays was pretty dire I know) and don’t forget to let me know what’s up with you too.

Space monkeys

I don’t know if anyone else has been watching Space Cadets on Channel 4. I have been watching when the opportunity arises with some interest. The sets are well set-up and persuasively done and the premise is certainly entertaining.

But the more I watch, the more I think that everyone in the supposed space shuttle must all be actors and the whole thing is a giant hoax on the viewers. It must be, surely, right. Nobody can be that dumb as to think they can be in a nice roomy big-brother style space shuttle, pissing about in orbit around planet earth, with no lack of gravity issues or any other serious considerations about breathable air, fuel consumption, flight trajectory or any of the many, many other serious issues that arise with space travel. I am not the only one who thinks this may be the case.

Perhaps I am being unduly harsh or cynical on the 'contestants.' If your environment looks the part, everyone is telling you that that is what is going on and you have no base line of previous experience of the sensation to refute this I don't doubt it could be difficult to make that leap of faith. But seriously, come on. You're supposed to be in a space shuttle floating round in orbit but you are not floating too. It ain't star trek you know.

Its over on Friday (I think) so I guess I get to find out whether my theory is correct or whether the 'cosmonauts' really are that dumb.

( ^ _ ^ ;)

The Japanese are crazy. If you didn’t know that already perhaps the unnecessarily complicated Japanese emoticons will sway you a little. Or how about the crazy signs and logos that they come up with (you may have seen this already, its been going round the internet for years but is still funny).

And if none of that persuades you perhaps the computer game where the objective is to take photos up girl’s skirts will convince you. Don't believe me, watch the video.

F**k Langley

Well yesterday was way interesting. Saw loads of nice places and some which really were pretty nice. It’s been a long time since I have seen a property and been excited about possibly living there. The last time I think was when I moved out of London with my parents into their present house.

Most places I have lived, whilst decent (with a certain second year at University exception), I can’t say I ever recall being actually excited about. More a, ‘meh, that’ll do’ or in the case of my present flat when I first saw it, ‘hmm, is that it?’

Suffice to say I like Maidenhead but I am not saying anything more in case I jinx it or something else irrational. I am going back today to try and reconcile some unexpected eventualities.

So erm… not too sure what happened to Christmas shopping day which was supposed to be today. I think it might be a rapid tour round John Lewis to see what those nice folks there can suggest.

And really, fuck Langley and fuck Slough too (I really hope I don’t regret saying that).

All change (no really this time)

Ok, so contract is returned to [withdrawn], notice handed in at present work and today I start the first day of my quest (proper) to find somewhere new to live.

First up on the list is Maidenhead but I still have that nagging feeling that it is just going to be too expensive. Nevertheless, I need to go have a look around to see what I can get. We’ll have to see what comes of that.

Conscious that I might not be able to afford Maidenhead I took a daring look around Langley this weekend as it has a reasonable compromise between being more affordable, closer to Ealing and not being Slough. And to demonstrate that Langley isn’t in Slough I have produced this helpful map:

Anyhow, now that I have [withdrawn] in the bag of course I am now (I say now, I mean at some point…) going to have to go back through all my posts and withdraw reference to it as it rather conflicts with my being paranoid about blogging work stuff.

Assault on the control room

Today I hand my notice in. I wonder how that will go…

Update:

... went fine. Guess I am really going then.

Megalomania lite

I have been having a lot of fun over the past few weeks with NationStates, which is a very simple to use on-line game (none of your multi-online-super-role-playing, my-nob-wizard-beats-your-death-ork nonsense mind). It’s basically a text based game where you control your fictitious nation and guide it through amending government policy, generally with extreme, unexpected and gently humorous results. You get a new theoretical scenario each day which shapes the way your nation works out.

Check out the status of my nation, Bedlamania, with its rather worrying lack of any legislative controls at all, apparently serious crime and gambling problems, also suffering from massive deforestation (none of which I intended, honest, I was just trying to be nice).

For the megalomaniac in all of us, but without any kind of major social or political repercussions.

Update:

And could today’s scenario be more appropriate to the timing of this post:

Vertigo

So Mark conceded that one of the posts that he was ‘going to do’ whilst ‘filling in’ for me when I was on holiday was on the Millau Viaduct in France. I was thinking of doing a post on it at some point anyway as it is a very cool looking bridge.

It is yet another structure designed by good old Norman Foster, who if you don’t know is responsible for the glass roof over the British Museum, the erotic gherkin in London (real name the Swiss Re Tower) and the 2005 RIBA Sterling Prize nominee, the MacLaren Technology Centre in Germany amoungst many other things.

The Millau Viaduct is really pretty high up, aside from being rather smart looking. You could fit One Canada Square (known to the proles as Canary Wharf) underneath it and that is a big building is big (trust me, I’ve been up it).

However if you want a truly vertigo inducing structure, how about the proposed Grand Canyon Skywalk, a U-shaped bridge suspended 1200 metres above the floor of the Grand Canyon… with a glass floor.

Too much time on the internet

Arguably I spend far too much time on the internet. However, one pastime that I can say with confidence that I have never engaged in is that art of egosurfing. Not that I would find very much about me as what is probably the principle source of information about me, namely this blog, is not picked up by internet search engines.

Of course, this clearly was not an alien phenomenon to this poor guy who screwed himself over at a border checkpoint when an unnecessarily web savvy border guard found the guys blog on search engine and put him in hot water on account of it.

However, this is not to say that this blog is not unfindable. I recently welcomed my first visitor from Australia who found me, no doubt accidentally, and with probably a massive lack of interest, care of those folks at technorati.

The big question is whether you spend too much time on the internet. I think this is a good test… Read this. If you understand it, I think you spend too much time on the internet. If you think its funny, like I did, perhaps its time to go into internet dependency counselling.

Bored of inevitability

It is now nearly a month since I was provisionally offered the [withdrawn] job and my provisionally accepting yet still no contract has been arranged. I am therefore stuck in this weird limbo land where I can’t hand my notice in at my present work in case something goes wrong (and knowing my luck, if it could, it would) but nor can I start sorting stuff out to get ready for a change.

So at work I have no enthusiasm for anything that I do but this is tempered by the fact that I have no firm guarantee yet of actually getting to go. This is added to my two months notice I have to run (once I am actually in a position to hand it in) and I can then actually leave.

Meanwhile at home I am undertaking the eminently dull task of sorting the three years worth of crap that I have accumulated into some semblance of order so that if I ever get the green light on the [withdrawn] job at least I can move fast(ish). This does not take away from it being a painfully dull task.

Anyway, so it looks like it will now be the beginning of February at best until I can leave my present job. The sugary glaze on this scenario though is that my parents are on holiday in Australia and New Zealand during February and March so if I get forced out of my current flat I can live at their nice house in the country rent free for two months (without the parental involvement that would drive me nuts). Of course the commute would suck more than an industrial grade Dyson and there would be no broadband, or sky, or friends, or take aways, or street lighting and then of course there are the ritual witch burnings and pagan festivals that happen in darkest Buckinghamshire but for zero rent I am not complaining about that (at least too much) (for the short term).

So another weekend passed of kicking around waiting for my own paperwork to catch up with me so I can get my life moving again.

Meanwhile the conundrum of where to live next (permanently) continues to play out. No matter how much I try to convince myself that I would be happy with a walk from North Ealing tube station to the office after arriving there from wherever else on the Piccadilly line, lets face it, I am not going to be happy with that as it is a longer walk than my present commute to work (in the theoretical situation that I walked that) after however long on the tube.

So I am back to considering things along the suburban rail lines into Ealing Broadway which is way closer. But I refuse to live in Southall, Hayes or West Drayton because they are at the bottom of the runway at Heathrow airport, are really rough, chav strongholds and well, there are other erm… ethnic issues that I really shouldn’t have a problem with but just do ok (I am sorry if that makes me a bad person). So this leaves somewhere called Iver, Langley (a glorified mobile home park), Slough (no comment), Burnham (read Slough), Taplow (again read Slough) and Maidenhead…

Blogatorium

Ok, two posts today, this one being the second, which I have decided to do because I have a small amount to write on two distinctly different things and likely if I don’t post on both now it won’t get blogged at all.

So my friend Bng’s blog appears to have been officially pronounced dead which does seem a shame although I do understand why. Nevertheless, I am going to keep the permalink to his blog for a little while on the off chance he may reconsider (otherwise it goes with my next permalink review).

However, Bng’s throwing in the towel at this stage is also slightly reassuring as at least if I ever get bored of this blog thing then I would not be the first person (I know) to throw in the blog towel.

Inquiry debrief

What with the whole getting caught up with the holiday thing I forgot to note a couple of highlights of the inquiry I was in last Wednesday. So my three favourite moments were:

1. Getting to call a mobile home park ‘a little twee for my tastes’ whilst under cross examination.
2. Getting heckled by the same residents of the mobile home park for saying other disparaging things about their mobile home park.
3. When our counsel got the appellants expert witness to hold his head in his hands after one of their witnesses blew apart a chunk of their case of their own accord.

Winter break 2

Now that I have worked out how to transfer photos from my phone onto my pc, here are a couple of the better photos (but far from great) that I snapped:

Me and Mike in a café in Amsterdam.

Nick and Mike with random girls whose names I don’t recall (and yes well done Mike who pulled the one on the far left) at around 4am in Amsterdam.

Nick and Mike in Amsterdam.

Me and Nick in the same place, but this photo is better... Notice the menu advertises 'atomic blog chicken,' we went for the nachos though.

And a funny sign, that probably isn’t all that funny at all, thanks to those crazy Belgians.

There are a few more (but not many as I had to keep an eye on the phone battery) but they are pretty dire and are not getting posted.

Winter break

Well, I am now back and reblogging again after my little excursion to northern Europe. And it was well, cold. However, having got back to England I am pretty sure it is colder here so I don’t feel hard done by in the slightest.

What with it being a multi-destination break arrived at care of the channel tunnel, I spent a lot of time on trains. Eurostar is brilliant, much nicer than getting on a plane and so delightfully easy and hassle free. Trains in Holland and Belgium are also good. I liked that when our train from Amsterdam to Brussels was running late they just (apparently randomly) axed stops with scant notice. Probably would have pissed me off though if my stop had been one of the ones they axed.

Accommodation was excellent in Brussels and really actually pretty dire in Amsterdam despite being more expensive. The Belgian hoteliers were welcoming and accommodating whilst their Dutch counterparts turned out to be a bunch back packing stoner loosers.

However, Amsterdam was a much more interesting city with a bit more going on. Ignoring the whole stoner nonsense, which I really don’t have time for, it seems like a very pleasant place. Possibly one of the most similar places to England in Europe that I have been though. I was frequently mistaken for being Dutch and actually quiet enjoyed passing myself off as a quiet Dutch person (quiet because I can’t speak a word of Dutch) (although that having been said the whole Dutch language seems to be constructed from taking a couple of English words and a couple of German words and sticking them together with some extra vowels).

Brussels was also pleasant and although I spent only a short time there by comparison to Amsterdam I think I can say with some confidence that I have seen most of it. No disrespect to the fine hosts but it is not an exciting city.

I think I will stick up some photos in a forthcoming post now that I have worked out how to upload them onto my pc from my phone but am not doing it now because getting them onto blogger takes a little time. Time I am now going to spend ironing my shirt for work.

Inquiry

So today I am in a public inquiry. My part in this is getting cross examined by the lawyers who are either going to try to do their best to make me look like the man (my counsel) or like the village idiot (appellant’s counsel).

I have been under cross examination in inquiries before and was pretty nervous about it. This time however I am relatively laid back about it as I know what’s coming and am fairly confident I can deal with it (although do have nagging doubts about being overconfident...).

The worst thing about it is having to speak, in public, to an audience which I dread. However from experience, due to the pressure of being under cross examination, worries like this (and everything else) go completely out of the window because it is such an intense experience as everything is caught up in thinking about and responding to the cross examination. I literally do not have the mental capacity to think, let alone worry, about anything else apart from being cross examined.

This is also my last post until about this time next Wednesday. I was a little surprised that anyone expressed an interest in taking over the blog temporarily but Mark is taking over as of tomorrow until this time next week.

I have attached no mandate or restrictions so what is delivered is entirely in his hands. I guess I will have to see what comes out of it.

Read only

I recently read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time which was very good and easy to read. However, being a book, you have to buy it or borrow it off a friend or a library or something like that.

I also have read They’re Made Out of Meat which is a short story (which I have linked to before in case you think you are having a deja-vu moment). I liked that too but what with it being a short story it was over rather fast.

I also recently read Gods Debris. I thought this was a good read too and what with it being available for free on the internet and being somewhat more than a short story (but still not huge - 124 pages of Adobe Acrobat) it has the best of both of the above two.

Have a read.

And the point of that was

I have previously said I wouldn’t (generally) rant about the stuff I was up to at the weekend but I am going to do a U-turn and confess that I wasted most of Saturday on the internet. So I at least have something to show for it I have added a bunch of permalinks (to the right) to some of the more fun slash interesting stuff.

I also produced a bunch of ‘generic’ posts to stuff for times when I don’t feel like expressing anything. I guess these will get posted as and when. However this is also in part response to a number of people saying that they like the linky posts I do. So thanks folks (sarcasm), it’s nice that you read Nick101 to find out what’s up with me. Having said this I don’t think I could sustain five posts a week all about me.

Nevertheless, follow the links. I don’t just link to any old crap you know.

I stuck the new permalinks up on Saturday but now feel a little remiss about not saying more about Orisinal (having spent much of Sunday there) because it is exceptional. Have a look, I challenge anyone not to find something that doesn’t make you smile.

Europe baby

This time next week I will be in Brussels and then Bruge and then Amsterdam. I am looking forward to this, it should be fun.

Not sure how we (me, Nick and Mike) ended up going for a long weekend in northern Europe when really a good burst of sun would have been nice but it is a break nevertheless which should be good.

This is the first time my blog will have to take a break from me unless I find internet terminals whilst abroad which in fairness shouldn’t be too hard. However I have also thought of giving the blog reigns to somebody else for a week. But I am not too sure if this would be egotistical or destroy the point of doing a personal blog or some sort of Freudian weirdness or just odd in general and actually whether anyone would give enough of a crap to be interested.

Nevertheless if you read this and want a no commitments play with a blog for a short time from Thursday 24th to Tuesday 29th let me know.

Welcome to Slough

So the travel costs from Maidenhead to Ealing are prohibitively expensive (taken in conjunction with rent). Guess I am not moving there. Running out of ideas…

50 (+ 1 actually)

So my last post was my fiftieth (not that I am counting, the nice people at blogger do that for me). I wanted to do a grand fiftieth post to commemorate this but as is often the case the importance of posting about other stuff (in that case sandwiches and job things) seemed more important at the time.

I am surprised I have gotten this far with this whole blogging thing. Firstly because I seem to have maintained my interest in it for the time being and second because people are reading it and moreover coming back to read more. The latter is particularly surprising given some of the tripe that I think I come out with.

The success thus far has in part been a consequence of the feedback I have got from people which has been really positive (although I guess it is unlikely that anyone is going to tell me this is garbage if it is) and has helped keep my own interest focused. So hey people, leave comments, I love getting comments. (I need the validation).

Another theme is that quite a few people have said stuff like ‘how do you come up with stuff to post’ etc. and they always seem surprised when I insist it really isn’t that hard. Just type stuff and it comes out. Really try it, you might like it or even be good at it. Being better than me at it couldn’t be that hard surely?

So here’s to me and my blog (swigs mug of tea in a self congratulatory manner) and here’s hoping to another fifty posts perhaps...

Double bookings

So I had another interview yesterday. This time with Wycombe District Council.

The interview went fine although it was a little strange being interviewed by my ex-boss. Especially when asked certain ‘typical’ questions you seem to get in interviews etc. and I generally have my ‘typical’ answers. However, I can’t exactly ‘big-up’ the stuff I did whilst one of the interviewers was my then boss. This floored me a little as I wasn’t too sure what to say, do I include the stuff I did with my ex-boss or come up with something else? Anyway I think I bodged it through just about.

However leaving the interview I was pretty certain that I preferred the [withdrawn] job. Don’t get me wrong I would quite happily settle for Wycombe and could do so with a lot less upheaval. But [withdrawn] seems a more interesting challenge.

Finishing the interview I then had to wait for an hour while the other candidates did the practical test and got interviewed before coming back for the psychometric tests at midday.

By the time I had wandered around Wycombe a little, decided I was going to get a Subway sandwich after the psychometric tests, found Subway, decided Subway was too far from the offices and the car for me to have time to get lunch from there, found an alternate sandwich place and wandered back to the offices I had kinda come to the view that I didn’t really fancy wading through an hour and a half of tests and to have a late lunch as a consequence. This especially as it would be a sandwich not from Subway. I could be spending the psychometric test time walking back to Subway and thinking about all the sandwiches I could be having for lunch and then eating the sandwich.

It occurs now that my focus on a Subway sandwich was probably symptomatic of not really wanting the job and probably being a little bit hungry too. I did the psychometric tests anyway (of course) which weren’t too bad, although I do wonder when I get given these tests at job interviews. I mean, are they really more insightful than my qualifications or are they just checking that I am as clever (or dumb) as my paperwork says I am.

Anyway, we’ll have to see how that pans out. It would be nice to be offered the job, if only for the ego boost.

I spent the afternoon having a look around Maidenhead and checking rental prices. I think Maidenhead beats Ruislip, Eastcote, South Harrow and all the other north west London places I have been thinking of moving too in terms of general atmosphere and the rental prices are comparable. Overall I think I prefer Maidenhead but my commute would be a little more complicated and may even be prohibitively expensive. I need to find out more on this.

I never did get my Subway sandwich by the way.

New pad

So this weekend I had the opportunity to take a look around some of my short listed areas for living in. Ruislip and Eastcote both seemed very pleasant. Both fairly quiet middle class suburban places and both eminently commutable to my new place of work. I think I could settle for either without too much upheaval.

Both are pretty much twenty minutes or so drive from where I live at the moment and aside from being a little closer to London proper are pretty much a comparable replication of where I am living at the moment; quiet, white, middle class suburbia. They are also within what I suppose I am going to have to settle for in terms of commuting time and distance. However, neither locations left me feeling particularly excited about the prospect of moving there. It just seems really, well, bland.

South Harrow was also short listed and I visited there too. It is a lot more urban and has much more of a London feel to it. It was also a bit grimy and certainly more than a little worn around the edges. It would certainly be a more interesting place to live I think but also possibly a little too much on the grimy and urban side of things for my general preferences.

I haven’t investigated Maidenhead at the moment but I know the town vaguely and could possibly picture myself living there, more so than anywhere else I have looked at thus far. The commute would be different from here, being a longer train journey but travelling more directly into Ealing Broadway train station. I am going to have a look around Maidenhead estate agents windows this afternoon (I have today off work).

What I would really like is to ‘test drive’ all of these places for a little while to see which one I liked however have neither the time or money so I am going to be committing for at least six months if not a year and want to get it right. However, I think when I start looking properly the situation is going to be forced upon me when I actually start looking around individual flats. Lets face it, what I really want is a flat with a short commute, decent sized living room, space in the kitchen for a washing machine and a dish washer, a power shower and off street parking.

Friday

As I have posted before it is often not so much that I can’t come up with anything to post. More that I don’t feel like expressing anything particularly. I feel this way at the moment but feel obliged to post something (particularly given last Friday’s absenteeism). So here are a bunch of bunch of mildly amusing links that I have found recently (for the most part robbed off the linkbunnies).

The Landover Baptist Church is a quite nicely polished spoof pseudo-religious site. The letters page is particularly funny with the outraged emails that are sent to them.

Amusing lists care of Mc Sweeney’s. Some are hit and miss but I like the style and have considered robbing the format for a couple of my own posts. Klingon fairy tales are one of my faves.

The implausibility of the trash compactor in the Death Star in Star Wars Episode IV.

Find out which level of hell you are going to be committed to in the style of Dante’s Inferno.

I may add some of these to my permalinks at some point.

All change (and excuses to get stuff)

So I rationalise if I am going to be changing job and flat and doing this commuting thing there is a bunch of stuff that I really do need to get, in order, most important first.

A new flat: I loose my current one when I move jobs and being homeless is just below ‘clean teeth with angle grinder’ on my list of things I don’t really want to ever have to try.

A new suit and some more shirts: I have three suits, but don’t wear one cos I don’t like it, so two really. Introduce the practicalities of not being able to take one of these to the dry cleaners whilst at work (try taking your dry cleaning on the tube!) and not otherwise being around when a dry cleaners is open I am going to need another suit if only for the day to day practicalities of having something varied to wear to work. Also I just want a new suit and this is actually a rather good excuse.

An Oyster Card: For doing the whole ‘commuting is cool in the 21st century’ by waving it at entrance barriers and making them flash lights and go bleep and stuff and getting you places too is handy.

A new pair of glasses: My current pair have been held together with bent staples and sticky tape for over a year now and I haven’t sorted the situation cos really I couldn’t give a crap. I think a new job though calls for a degree of professionalism in terms of eye-wear.

An I-pod or other such portable music device: To keep me entertained slash happy on commuting trips and other journeys not involving driving (with associated in-car entertainment) which looks like an increasingly prospect.

A man bag: Which I have wanted for ages but haven’t really needed cos the car or pockets have sufficed to keep stuff in up until now. But being more remote from home, mobile without car and an increased payload (ie. aforementioned I-pod etc, book, paper, lunch, water, extra layer of clothing…) means I am going to need to port this stuff about and a carrier bag (even a posh one from Harrods or Bentalls) just doesn’t cut it. Also folks have said I would look like a ponce if I had a man bag and in fairness I probably would. But looking like a ponce with supporting justification sits with me a little more comfortably.

A PSP: Similar justification as with the I-pod toy. It’s at the bottom of the list though because it is an indulgence rather than a necessity.

Weird stuff to put in the sea

So I think common consensus is fairly established that The Principality of Sealand is a little bit mental. But it’s not the only weird structure that got built in the Thames Estuary.

Of course all this really does pale in comparison to what those crazy folks in Dubai are up to. I mean really, a hotel shaped like a sail on an artificial island and a reproduction of the entire planet in an island archipelago.

All change (subject to completion of satisfactory paperwork)

Yesterdays post was hardly the dramatic ‘check this out I have a new job’ that I intended it to be. Rather it turned out to be a rather mundane rendition of how me and my prospective employer didn’t really manage to sort out what exactly was going on.

I had intended this whole thing to go something along these lines:

Me: This job you have offered me a princely sum for, I would like to take it.
Head of Planning: Excellent work, good to have you on board.
Me: It’s a pleasure Sir; I will have those references in the mail to you today.
Head of Planning: Likewise, I shall ensure your contract is also dispatched forthwith.

However, it didn’t. I never got to formally accept the job and only, I think, conveyed that I wanted it by harassing a large number of people over the course of the day to finally be informed by my recruitment consultant’s stand in (who I think mentioned was nevertheless very nice) that the Head of Planning had got the message but was on holiday until next week and we’d sort out the particulars when he was back.

But anyway, reservations about how it has worked out thus far and will pan out in future aside, I should have a new job. At the moment I am feeling a mixture of being excited about doing something new, in a fresh environment with all kinds of different challenges but equally really rather nervous and slightly scared that this is going to be a very, very big change.

First of all I need to work out where I am going to live. Not wanting to really want to share a place, end up in a small studio flat or have a massive commute my choices are pretty much defined as being somewhere between Harrow and Uxbridge on the Piccadilly Line linking into North Ealing tube station or to intercity it from Slough (yuck) or Maidenhead into Ealing Broadway. The current front runner is Ruislip which has the fairly decent trade off of being about a 40 minute commute (one way) combined with just about acceptable rental payments on a one/two bed flat. But I need to do further research into stuff before committing.

I think the next few months are going to be interesting but perhaps not necessarily enjoyable as I try to sort all this stuff out. However I am not doing anything for the time being. I want some solid paperwork from these people before I'm even going to consider handing my notice in or make any other permanent changes.

All change (in theory)

I should probably explain the lack of posts both on Friday and my usually posting something earlier, today. The [withdrawn] offered me the position of Principal Planner at 16:22 on Thursday last week. I spent Friday and the weekend deliberating and considering whether I was going to accept the position.

However, suffice to say that by Sunday afternoon I was pretty convinced that I was going to go for it and could make it work financially and practicably on a daily basis (mainly in terms of where to live and commuting related stuff).

I was hoping to do a grand post announcing this and briefly expressing my feelings on it after ringing them and confirming my acceptance of the position much earlier this morning. However, I can’t get in touch with them and nor can my recruitment consultant's stand in (who is very nice in fairness) as the main guy is on holiday.

So, erm, hopefully at some point, eventually I might be able to talk to my prospective employer and sort all this out however for the mean time it is still rather up in the air. Perhaps tomorrows post will be a little more triumphant?...

H5N1 lite

I’m ill. Despite trying to ignore it and hoping it would go away of its own accord (because up until now I didn’t have time to be ill), I am now laid out being all hot and shivery and sore throatish. I am presently in that phase where lucozade tastes good and having a diet consisting of squishy fruit, soft bread and soup.

Don’t get me wrong though, I am not complaining (too much). It’s actually quite nice to have a break where I can’t really do much apart from wrap in layers and sit around and watch TV. It’s been a little while since I have had the opportunity to not do anything.

The interview with Ealing BC yesterday was interesting but I am not going to theorise on the outcome of it. I shall just wait and see.

I was however more than a little baffled by their offices. I was met in main reception and taken through about five (seriously chunky) security doors before arriving in what looked like an internet café. There were small desks with computers on, a cafeteria with tables and chairs, breakfast bars and a lounge area with a big plasma tv all decked out with lots of white walling, jaunty lighting and masses of glass.

It was only after the interview that I was told that this was the planning department. Nobody had their own desk or paperwork (which included heads of service etc). You just sat where you liked for whatever suited. A meeting in the cafeteria, day-to-day work at a computer, concentrated work in a quiet room. And it was all almost completely paperless. Not too sure what to make of it. It was all very interesting and different but couldn’t help but get the impression that they were enforcing a relaxed working environment which as a consequence wasn’t relaxed at all.

Hits from across the pond

Ok, so yesterday my site traffic had a (small) peak in activity attributable to another website (from somebody I don’t know) linking to me which left me with a strange warm and fuzzy feeling. It was actually quite strange reading what I had written being quoted on somebody else’s website and then getting linked to. I mean really, I didn’t think I was particularly quote-worthy.

I would do a link back for demonstration purposes but I think that would be blogging narcissism.

In other events, it appears that me and blogger are struggling to reconcile the clocks changing. It seems I can either change all the post times an hour forward so the time stamp on historic posts are one hour into the (retrospective) future or stick as is and all comments on my posts are one hour into the future. Not too sure how to fix this.

Sorry we missed you

So, about ten days ago I thought it would be a rather nice idea to get myself a new mobile on account of my having never liked my current one and especially having put up with it for nearly two years now. So clever old me gets online and finds me a good deal. A painfully long wait of around ten days and finally a ‘sorry we missed you’ note from parceline is sitting on my floor when I get home from work.

Ok, fine, I wasn’t in, this was not unexpected as I do work during the week. The ‘sorry we missed you note’ explains that I can either ring or go on the internet to arrange another ‘standard’ delivery time, arrange a ‘premium’ delivery time or go and collect it.

Now, I can’t manage a ‘standard’ delivery time because this could be any time during the course of the day and I’m not about to take the whole day off work. For ‘premium’ I have to dish out a tenner and then all I get is either a morning or afternoon delivery window or on a Saturday morning. Have these guys not heard of the evening? So I think I’ll go collect it, but best find out where to collect it from though before committing to anything.

Me rings up the phone line, standard robot lady greeting. Press one for ‘standard’ delivery or press two for ‘premium’ delivery. Erm, no I want to find out where the collection place is. Ok, so I press no number buttons when prompted and after a wait of what seems like ages I finally confuse the robot lady and she tells me she’s going to connect me to a customer service assistant. Yay, what I wanted all along. Sadly, the customer service assistant is another robot lady who tells me to leave a message giving details of whether I want ‘standard’ or ‘premium’ delivery. I conclude that these robot ladies are not very bright so I try again. This time I play the whole mash the key pad and press lots of buttons when the first robot lady asks for ‘standard’ or ‘premium.’ Same result, robot lady two asks me to leave a message.

Ok, so I give up trying to talk to a human being or make polite conversation with the robot ladies and try their internet version. Enter reference number, fine. ‘Premium’ or ‘standard’ delivery or ‘collection.’ Right, collection please, when would you like to collect. Hmm, well finding out where I supposed to go would be nice but the earliest I can actually manage is Wednesday evening pretty much regardless where it is So Wednesday 18:30 please... I get this screen:

What, where I am supposed to collect the thing from! Where is the fabled 'parceline depot.’ So I explore their website now that I appear to have committed myself to collecting it from…?

After finding no indication of where I’m supposed to go I send them a mildly arsey email. In fairness I get a swiftish response to this and am directed to Humphreys Road, Dunstable which is about 30 minutes away so I am not too unhappy with that in the event (although, I still don't know where on Humphreys Road I am going but am happy to settle for this after the hastle so far).

I spent nearly an hour trying to get to this point though. Why must it be so hard? All I wanted was to talk to a human being to ask an easy question (or even a mildly personable robot lady would have been ok too).