Bloody technology is great when it works, but when it goes wrong, it’s a complete pain in the arse! Still, spending the entire morning pissing about trying to find out why a rogue file keeps trying to sync to my Palm – resulting in a spectacular crash – is much better than using the equivalent energy working. Even better, the effort involved produces a furrowed brow that gives the impression of deep concentration!

Fridays are good, not only because it’s the end of the working week for most, but Fridays also coincides with a frenzied e-mail activity from people who seem to have an endless supply of humorous video clips, jokes and cartoons. Apart from the getting up early and the stress involved in getting to work, Fridays are essentially a freebie day off for a lot of people. I’m talking public sector here of course. The pay’s crap, but you get to piss about a lot.

BBC NEWS | England | Tees | Petrol addict banned from shops

Well, with in an interest in sniffing things, this story could hardly be ignored. What a freak! Then again, the smell of petrol is rather lovely.

Oh my God! I can’t believe it’s Thursday already. I actually thought it was Friday when I woke up all fuzzy-headed this morning so it just goes to show how your perception of time changes depending on how much you need a wee.

Oh to be more cat-like

OK, here’s something to think about: some things really get our goats up – more often than not, these are things that are done by other people and that we have no control over. However, what about those little things that, as individuals, we really get annoyed with ourselves about? Things like trying to pick up a credit card off a flat surface, or bending down and trying to pick something up off the floor, but repeatedly missing. Simple tasks that should be achieved really easily sometimes screw you up for what seems like an age. There are mental equivalents too, like having somebody’s name, or a fact, or a song title on the tip of your tongue, but being unable to get it out. Annoying, isn’t it?

You see, it’d be great to be a cat or a dog because they take full advantage and turn such situations into games that last them a whole lifetime (e.g. washing the end of their tails). And they probably don’t have the mental capacity to recognise music so they never have to worry about losing at Beat the Intro. You can imagine them sniffing another animal’s arse and thinking I know who you are, I just can’t quite place it, it’s on the tip of my tongue (quite literally, the dirty buggers). They don’t half allow themselves to get worked up into a right old lather with a catnip sack though.

I hate the Thelwall Viaduct

That’s all there is to say about that.

I hate some of the people at work much more; a few can be really ignorant and rude. The bastards.

The BBC must be the saviour of so many bored office-based workers here in the UK. More specifically, the BBC news website is absolutely brilliant and it’s easy to get lost in its pages and features. In addtion, having Internet Explorer open on the BBC news website is so acceptable that it’s almost written into contracts (for those people that have contracts). So, well done BBC! Of course, it be a lot different if the firewalls and IT police allowed access to porn sites.

My car had a flat tyre when I got in from work. Yet by the time I’d phoned the garage to warn them that I was bringing it down (the spare’s one of those ones you can’t use at speed), got changed, got the tools out of the boot, shouted at my dad and moved the car a bit so it was on the flat, it had miraculously reinflated!

Finally for today, or at least till I think of something else, a thank you to those people who can be bothered to read this crap and take the time to comment on it.

Really finally…Breathing (10.30pm)

Something odd is happening with the formatting and the line spacing has gone double. Anyway, I’ve realised what I’m doing wrong on the treadmill at the gym. I went tonight and I discovered that if you run with your back as straight as possible, your head up and you actually breathe in deeply, it makes the whole task a lot easier. I managed quite well and could’ve gone on longer only I had other infernal machines of torture to subject my poor, aged body to.

Grocery graveyards
I think all the major retailers have certain stores where stock gets sent to die. I found a stockpile of hot chilli peanuts at Tesco in Chorley on Saturday. I bought five bags; gave one to my friends to try (my generosity knows no bounds) and brought the remainder home for my parents, who’d only managed to avoid severe withdrawal symptoms by slowing their metabolism to a state where they slept 23 hours a day (or so it appeared).

MacShit
Actually, Tesco proved to be my saviour on Saturday. A running theme in here is my obsession with bowel movements – I have a very active digestive system that I’m actually rather proud of. Anyway, my friends have been working very hard on fitting a new bathroom and their toilet was out of action on Saturday while I was there. I managed to do a load of shopping in about 3 shifts so I could take advantage of the store’s full range of facilities. On one visit, I even had a convenient nosebleed as I was entering the store (for real) and this gave me an excellent excuse to check out the the ladies’ again! That’s one good thing about modern retailers and fast food outlets: their reliable toilet facilities in times of need. Let’s face it, not many folks like using public lavs when out and about and, at some point, most of us have skipped past the queue in McDonalds and headed straight for the loo. But don’t bother with KFC because they’ve grown wise to it and you have to get the key from a staff member before you can go. “A chicken zinger burger and big massive poo please”.

I blame Tony Blair and Gordon Brown for most things these days; I’m bound to be right a good proportion of the time. Mr Bleuuhhhrr has been in Manchester today and I actually saw two uniformed coppers in the city centre on my way home. He can come again!

Of course, The Mind Gym would tell us not to go around blaming others for things that we’re not particularly satisfied with in our lives. We should look at things from a different perspective, turn a situation around as if we were a different person. Any way up, people would look at my life and agree that it’s shite, as they would their own no doubt. And what do people in the Uk have in common? That’s right! Tony Blair and Gordon Brown stealing their money and ruining the country.

Anyway, I don’t want to descend into politics because others do that sort of thing so much better than me.

Cold
It seems to have been cold since September and dark since November. There are three months of hope for a decent summer around March, April & May, then this is followed by the growing disappointment and despair of realising that summer never actually happens here – you just get a slightly warmer brand of greyness and rain.

Running
Running is torture; I find it difficult to believe that anybody finds the activity exhilerating, or fun. It really hurts – everything really hurts when I run: toes, feet, ankles, lungs, calfs, tits. Running must be hard or they wouldn’t have made Kelly Holmes a dame otherwise.

Other people’s blogs
A lot of other people’s blogs are very good and very entertaining. The contributors seem to spend a lot of time and effort on them. It makes you wonder when something goes from being a bit of fun that you add to every now and again to something that becomes a bit of a bind. Perhaps with the popular ones, there’s a growing expectation from a captive audience, eager for more. The associated pressure could become rather stifling, I imagine (iyemagin).

And finally for today, a rant about ranting. Looking at these blogs, I’ve noticed a propensity for bloggers to describe or name their efforts using the words “rant”, “rambling” and “random”, and sometimes “musings” (could you see what I’d done with my “Over the rainbow” colour spectrum there?). I’d done it myself and I realised that ranting isn’t particularly healthy and I didn’t particularly want to join the massed ranks of Victor Meldrews that populate the interweb (thank ee, Mr Vavin sir). Ranting, rambling and musings I can understand, but why random? Random??? Surely if it was random, you’d just get a string of nonsense words or something? Having never been a student of philosophy, I can’t have an argument with myself on this one, but I’d love to know what would happen if people wrote down every random thought they had. Surely it’d be something like Turette’s (‘scuse the spelling) syndrome or something. MOT. There, that’s one and it’s senseless. I suppose it comes from the same sort of mindset that would proclaim, “This random guy came up to me and I got most perturbed”. Ah well, the musings of a ranting, rambling mind, eh.

Anyway, I’ve now gone for “goings on” instead. “Goings on” is quite a good description for the contents of a lot of blogs because people convey things that are going on in their lives. However, and here’s the clever bit, “going on” is also a synonym for “ranting”. Going on is that thing that mums do really well in a kind of sadistic payback for all the times they fell victim to our whining when we were kids.

Jeez, I’m a boring twat at times. The rest of the time, I’m not even boring; I’m just a twat.

Codeine is ace until it makes you want to vomit and bungs up your colon.

And I had another random nosebleed this evening. In Asda of all places. The indignity of it.

…from the past

I used to enjoy going into the old MSN chatrooms, well one in particular that was a friendly place where no naughtiness was allowed. I’ve made a few real friends from there and others I still chat to in messenger. One was a feller who went by the name Metranil Vavin, or Vav, as he became known. He is lovely, or at least I think he is: completely outrageous and he always cheered me up just by be being “in the room”. He and others also provided a virtual shoulder to lean on when I was going through a particularly difficult time in 2003. Anyway, Mr Vavin has found my blog (see comment below) and I’m absloutely delighted about it.

Blogging is something of a natural thing for me to do: I spent an entire year documenting my every day happenings in e-mails that I sent to my closest friend and I found writing down certain thoughts and happenings rather therapeutic. Despite not doing that anymore, I still found the idea of offloading certain things very attractive and then I discovered web logs. I tried to start one at the end of 2003, but I only had venomous thoughts to convey and it would’ve been destructive and unfair. Anyway, New Years and what have you gave me the desire for a new pet hobby and this is it! Perhaps one day I’ll collate all this crap and publish a diary. I just hope that I never become famous, or get into a position of power, because this sort of ranting could land a person in hot water.

I think I’m getting a cold: my throat isn’t sore, but it feels weird and tight; my nose and lips are dry and my sinuses are a little blocked.

I need to do a bit of work now. Humph.

I love Tesco! However, there are certain things about supermarkets that I cannot stand. I went to my local store this evening and the thing that always hits me there is the laziness of the customers: this is evident in the car park, with trollies strewn all over the place, taking up parking bays – all because people are such lazy bastards that they can’t walk the 30 or so yard to the trolley park. Stupid twats. I think it’s quite a well-to-do area (in comparison to where I live) and some of the customers must find that sort of thing beneath them. Either that or they’re just inconsiderate and lazy. Second annoyance is changing stocks: you’ll go there for ages, get used to a certain product and then you’ll find it’s been discontinued. I always find this with hair styling products and it really pisses me off – why do they do it? My family also became rather partial to Tesco’s own brand chilli peanuts over Christmas and they too have been discontinued. There were a few confused and forlorn-looking punters scouring the salty snack aisle while I was there. A popular snack – gone! Yet there’s a whole bloody aisle given over to Easter (25th March) and bastard Valentine’s Day (14th February – I’m not bitter). I’m not just knocking Tesco for this premature assault of goods on its customers because all the supermarkets do it, but I wish they wouldn’t. The year passes quickly enough as it is without bringing things forward months in advance. It won’t be long before they start selling Christmas things again.

So I negotiated the shop (and they only had organic papardelle) and got to the till where the woman in front of me waited till she’d paid and my own goods were being scanned before she decided to think about packing her three items very slowly. I told the lad on the till to hang on a minute because our stuff was getting mixed up and she gave me such a glare. She was so slow and fucking retarded, but looked bright enough to know better, I could’ve killed her. All my stuff had been scanned by the time she picked up her bloody stuff and pissed off. I think she was one of these hippy types who refuses to be rushed by the pressures of the 21st century, but she was coming close to getting a slap – that’d have brought her into 2005! Stupid bitch. Then I got charged for three cans of borlotti beans and not two as I’d bought. Still, I should get them for free because of it.

I think I’m going to e-mail Tesco and tell them to start stocking their chilli peanuts again – they’re DELISH!

Other stuff

What else has been happening in Tinaworld? Not much. It looks like the administration of my contract is finally getting shifted to my other base. It actually doesn’t make any difference to my salary, but I get the right number of holidays and I trust this particular organisation to handle things much more fairly. My current host employer is basically shit and nobody in HR there seems to know their arse from their elbow – or they don’t care.

Because of the impending shift of things, I made sure that I got six months’ worth of travel expenses claim in today. Again, it doesn’t make any real difference because it’s money that’s already essentially come out of my pocket, it’s just nice to get an extra £300 in one month’s salary. It also helps to clear the Christmas overdraft hangover. Helps to clear, unfortunately, it won’t wipe it out.

Windows media player and the other similar PC media software packages are brilliant! It’s great to have a load of music stored on your PC, play your stuff on shuffle play and use Media Player to play “beat the intro” against yourself. I’d like a hard drive portable jukebox thing to store all my music on, but they’re a bit too expensive. I think I’d look at the iRiver models and avoid iPod like the plague. Then again, I wouldn’t turn my nose up at one if I was given one as a pressie – I just don’t think they’re the best value for money and Apple always tend to concentrate too much on design and forget about functionality and reliability.

I basically hate anything to do with Apples and Macs after a torrid experience with a pink iMac that was forced on me. In an act of mercy, somebody kindly stole it from my office at work and I had better performance out of a crappy old PC than I ever achieved with the pink pest. Pile of crap, used by anally-retentive geek conspiracy-theorists who prefer style over substance. Saying that, the design of the things leaves a lot to be desired too. Everything about them is bobbins.

I think that will do for now. I want to get an early night because I’m shagged.

“Wham! Bam! I am, a man! Job or no job, you can’t tell me that I’m not. Do you enjoy what you do? If not, just stop, just say no!” Wham rap is top notch. Eeeeh, takes me back. 22 years, can you believe it?

I’ve just had a cream doughnut for my pudding after tea (dinner, supper) of marinated tuna steaks, that were “pan-fried” in a very hot frying pan, and a vegetable accompaniment of green beans and sprouts. Sprouts with tuna steak??? I had them after I’d finished the other bits. They weren’t very nice today.

Cold

It’s quite nippy here in England today. I wouldn’t go as far as to say it was freezing, because it’s not, it’s just a bit cold. I just seem to be feeling it today. It must be my age.

Catnip

We had a very entertaining evening at the expense of our furry friends last night. I’d bought some catnip teabags from Wittards and I’d only just managed to get the cellophane off the box when the Moose started trying to get into it. I made a tea from one of the bags and gave a fresh one to gorgeous Max to play with: he was completely off his face; rubbing it, rolling round on the floor, rubbing anything it had touched. I brought some of the tea into the living room to see if he’d drink it, but he just tried to rub his face on it. Then Snotto got hold of the wet bag and lay with his chin on it for half any hour – Max found his neck very attractive after this. I’ve confiscated the bags for a couple of days until the effects wear off.

Brothers

As much as you love ’em, brothers are a pain. I don’t think anybody with a brother would disagrees with me. My brother is impossible to buy presents for; or should I say, he asks for presents that are impossible to buy. It was his birthday on Sunday and he asked if I could get him a black Wrangler denim jacket. Well, no, I can’t. Nowhere sells them: not in blue, not in black, for neither boys nor girls. Oh look, Jeans Direct on the internet sell one for £50. FIFTY QUID??? You can get a Levi’s denim jacket from Costco for £20, but he wants a bloody Wrangler one! Tit. I’ll see what he says. If it’s what he really wants, I’ll order it, but he’ll have to pay a fair bit towards it.

I need another coffee.

Wrong number texts

I was knackered last night so I went to bed relatively early for me. I’d put the light out at about 11pm, and must’ve dropped off fairly soon afterwards. I was woken up by the message tone on my mobile at about 11.45pm: “Hey sexpot, i’m in bulford soon again 4 a week, wot r u wearing?x”. I was very tempted to reply: “My pyjamas and a scowl. You’ve got the wrong number, dickhead”, but I fell back to sleep.

How is it possible to send a text message to a wrong number? Surely somebody you’d call “Sexpot” would deserve a place in your mobile’s phonebook and this would remove all possibility of keying in the wrong number. Unless you’re a thick as pigshit, which let’s face it, somebody who’d use abbreviations such as “wot”, “r” and “u” probably is. Should I post the guilty party’s number here for all you good folk(s) to call and message in the small hours? Tempting.

Subway

I had a subway sarny for my dinner today. It was OK, but I’d love to know what “BMT” means. I was going to have my usual cup-soup-soup, but the Tesco Express near work doesn’t sell them. I obviously went for something with a similar calorific value!

Contact lenses

These bloody lenses are killing me this evening. I’ve not had them in for a couple of days and I put them in when I got in from work because I’m going the gym later and I want to get accustomed to them before going out. They feel like little bits of sand today. They’re monthly torics and I think they’re not as comfortable as the daily disposables are because they have to be sturdier.

Yes, off to the gym later, so I have to psych myself up for it – it takes all my energy doing that! Honestly, the things we have to put ourselves through as 21st century humans. At least there are curries, chips, doughnuts and salty snacks as compensation!

I did a Google search for my blog this morning and it came up as listed within another search thing. I don’t know whether I need to exercise caution from now on, but I don’t think I’ll be inundated with readers.

Today I managed to get out of bed at 9.30 – it’s Saturday, you see. My back’s a bit sore today and I’m hoping that it eases off within the next hour or so because I want (need) to go the gym.

This weekend could turn out one of many ways, with “really good”, “not bad” and “terrible” being amongst the possibilities. I’m off out this afternoon to see some friends and there’ll be curry for tea. If you’re ever in Adlington, near Chorley, go the the Shapla takeaway, it’s top notch. Tomorrow I’m going car hunting with my sister. I’ve no idea why anybody thinks I’m qualified to help anybody make a decision of this magnitude, but there you go. I think the car hunting thing could be quite an ordeal.

I need to delete the “Cannot find server” post – it was a test thing that I did when I couldn’t access Blogger the other evening.

My breaksfast isn’t particularly nice today – Shredded Wheat Bitesize and sugar-free Alpen. It’s a bit of trial trying to eat it.

Cannot find server

Palm powered

Well, It’s taken me three and a half years, but I’ve finally decided to start using my PDA properly. I tend to use it to transfer details of my diary and contacts between bases, and it’s really useful for that sort of thing. But apart from that, it’s just a toy. Anyway, with Outlook and stuff, it’s really easy to jot down notes in the “To do” list rather than just leaving bits of paper with scribbles hanging around. Indeed, the Mind gym advocates writing down all good ideas as soon as you have them; moreover, it says that some great innovations have come about by thinking of what you’ve got and then trying to think of the exact opposite (stuffed crust pizzas are an example). So yes, I’m starting to make notes in my PDA and categorising them according to projects or people and then I can bring up the tasks as and when. If I can be bothered of course.

Stuffed crust pizzas are something that I’ve never particularly fancied in all honesty, I’m more of a thin and crispy to tell you the truth. But I suppose they’re a huge marketing success so that’s what counts.

Carmelita here insists on saying “So you haven’t got access to his electronic?”, meaning “Has such and such given you rights to his Outlook diary?”. I guess there’s nothing wrong with saying “his electronic”, it’s just that when you hear it 40 times each day at very loud volume, it becomes rather tiresome. Also, it’s indicative of how backward some people’s working practices are: I didn’t realise people used anything other than electronic diaries at work these days, especially when lots of people need to know where the head honcho is.

She’s now talking about her latest holiday:she has about 5 foreign holidays each year, it’s amazing. Then again, she washes her clothes by soaking them in the bath and claims lieu time for simply hanging around work till 6pm, so she has the time and resources to do this.

Did I tell you about the swan? There’s a little pond near here and, last spring, it was home to a pair of mating swans, as well as the usual ducks. Some charming individual killed one of the swans and it caused a fair bit of outrage, quite rightly too. However, Carmelita’s suggestion to prevent such an unfortunate event happening again was to “move all the birds to the canal, drain the pond, fill it with concrete and use it for car parking!” Yes, because the people who killed the swan wouldn’t be able to find their way to the canal, would they? Honestly. I won’t go into the episode of litter on the expressway because my arteries can’t take the surge in blood pressure at the moment.

After a ranting e-mail to my line manager, after she’d expressed concerned about the disappearance of my usual friendly, happy-go-lucky persona and the manifestation of very grumpy one, I got a phonecall from her in which she tried to counsel me. I’m not knocking her and I think an awful lot about her, she’s great, but when you’re feeling completely crap about everything, it doesn’t help to be told: “At least you’ve got a job. And it could be much worse; at least you’re not in Thailand”. True, I’m not in Thailand, but it’s all relative, isn’t it? There are no exclusive rights to feeling wretched and in my current frame of mind, given my current situation, I feel bloody wretched.

So that’s me for the moment. I’m off to the gym tonight. I went on Tuesday evening and I didn’t half smell rotten by the time I’d finished; I made myself feel quite poorly so I felt quite sorry for the poor people that were either side of me when I was on the cross trainer – I didn’t do my arms though, so I tried to minimise the pollution as much as possible at least.