Why too much spare time is dangerous.

We’ve all suffered from exhaustion, the point where the daily drudgery of working life becomes too much. I recently reached this point when I discovered that I was spending so much time working or worrying about it, I had no time for myself, or my other projects. I decided to hatch a cunning plan. I would book two weeks away from work, and use the time to catch up with everything I’ve fallen behind on, relax, and have some fun.

The only problem is, whenever you actually have spare time, you never use it particularly wisely. I’ve been on holiday for nearly five days now, and I’ve yet to do a single thing that I planned too. It’s taken me this long just to start writing this blog.

Without a deadline, the human body seems to go into some kind of “chill-out” mode. Whereas my life before was wake up, shower, change, grab my lunch and quickly run to the train station for a full day’s work, I now wake up after midday, and don’t leave my bed until gone one.

There are other strange symptoms to this, too. For example, I find myself distracted by things which I would otherwise consider relatively trivial. Not content with reskinning the FileFront Forums completely, or creating threads like this, I caught myself trying to partition my hard drive so I could install Ubuntu onto my computer. I have no idea why I wanted to do this, because it’s a shockingly poor operating system these days that doesn’t work with a single device that I own, yet I nearly did it. I then moved onto trying to install Mac OS X. I figured this too much effort to do, so I then thought about installing Windows XP, so I could reskin it to look like Mac OS X.

I finally snapped out of it and did something useful, but for a moment I was nearly going to throw away an entire evening on something meaningless and stupid.

Despite all this free time, I also find myself even lazier than I was before. Rather than going out to the shops to restock when my fridge is empty and I feel hungry, I keep going back every 10 minutes or so to see if there’s an uneaten sausage that I’ve somehow missed. I then return to the living room to play more Fallout 3 before realising I am hungry again, and going for another look.

Ultimately though, isn’t this what holidays are all about? Relaxing? Being able to take your sweet old time about everything? Who cares that I’ll never get anything done, I’ll worry about that when I go back to work.

Virgin Media are idiots and trolls.

Branson Troll Face.

When we decided to go with Virgin for our telephone and internet connection, we thought it looked like a good deal.  I was hesitant for quite a while but the cost compared to other providers combined with a landline, phone service etc. was pretty good, plus they could install it quickly, and “going fibre” sounded like a good move.

So now we have a crackly phone line that won’t stop ringing random numbers on it’s own, an internet connection that constantly drops out, and I have to leave work early so an engineer can come and do nothing about the problem – otherwise they’ll charge me £10.

It’s funny really because my friend at work had – and still has – the exact same issue with his Virgin line. I should have listened to him and stayed clear, but for some reason I assumed his problems must have been a one-off. The chances of me experiencing the same problem were slim, right?

They are comics, but I'm not really laughing.

Skip foward to today. The engineer has been round, and disconnected our telephone line, because the cable was shorting out under the ground and causing the phone to dial out random numbers. He said someone would be round to “repull” the cable, but didn’t give a date or time, and nobody has rang to give me a date or time – probably because they can’t – we have no phone. The internet is still on but patchy at best, the modem requires a reset two or three times a day.

Yesterday Virgin decided to bill us for the pleasure of this. £78, of which, £54 is call charges for calls that lasted less than 50 seconds. I don’t make calls that last less than 50 seconds, infact I don’t often make calls off the landline at all. My theory? The phone has been dialing out to random people and we’re being charged for it.

Virgin Media have been a complete and total fuckup from day 1. If anyone is considering going with Virgin Media I strongly suggest you treat them like Asbestos and stay clear.

I’m about to ring them back to try and get the problems resolved. Ultimately I’m about to speek to Pooja Bhuttar in Mumbai, who will fail to do anything useful for me except baffle me with his strange accent. I’m not racist, I’ve got nothing agaisnt the fella, but he won’t be able to do anything  from there.

……Going to Sky as soon as we can get out of this contract. Murdoch, all is forgiven.

20 minutes to save the world, and all I have is a Post Office. And it’s shut.

Wha-wah-wuh? What is this place… oh, wait wait no, I remember, thingimebob, urm, yes! Yes! That’s it, the internet! I remember now! Man, it’s been ages! I’m surprised the internet has coped to be honest, but I guess it just goes to show the strength of the place.

There’s so much catching up to do now, it’s going to take me a few days, but rest assured I’ll have all my Twitter, Facebook, websites and YouTubes all up-to-date in the coming days, weeks, months, or whatever.

So, what’s new? Well, I’ve completed Bioshock 2, which was the last thing I blogged about, a few times over. Sonic and Sega All-Stars Racing has been and gone too, which was a very fun game. Perfect Dark came out for Xbox Live, that’s an awesome game, and I’m currently playing through it along with Dante’s Inferno, which is another pretty awesome title.

Work-wise, well, its very busy. Mobilising to new areas, end of year reports, external audits, its been busy and this is primarilly the source of my missingness in the last few weeks. I’m glad to be having this Easter weekend off to actually get some time away from it all and do stuff like this, or chill out, or go for a beer.

Ah, there’s such a huge list of things to go through that I didn’t blog about at the time, its hard work right now. Maybe these things will just have to go unblogged. Never will we read about the exciting streets of broadway, Sonic 4, my various railway adventures to parts of the country, winning half a months wages in the bookies, a certain girl getting locked out of the office for a whole day, that chicken sandwich I ate, or Dawson missing WrestleMania because his phone was stolen. Perhaps some things are best left buried.

Nah. I’ll write about these things and more shortly. In the meantime, stay safe, be cool, and don’t forget, the rain falls up in Australia.

Oh yeah, the new Doctor Who that was on today is awesome. Matt Smith is a great Doctor. This brings that very old post about him I wrote ages ago full-circle or somesuch, the one where I buried him for no justifyable reason. Sorry Matt, all is forgiven.

On This Day 22 Years Ago…

A fat little child was born in Hope Hospital’s maternal ward. Due to a strike at the time the fat little child was delivered in a complicated manner by a trainee asian midwife and his father, and after nearly dying there and then, he would go on to experience more near-death expereinces than anyone could care to count.

But I made it through such unusual circumstances and for that I have decided there must be a reason. So from this day forth my mission is to find my reason. Or somthing like that, anyway.

So to celebrate this momentus occasion, I’m going to look at my favourite threee awesome things that were born during the legendary year of 1988.

Red Dwarf…

The mining ship Red Dwarf, lost 3 million years into deep space, and was to become so popular that it won nearly 8 million viewers on BBC 2, a record held to this day. It’s recent comeback on Dave broke more ground, and earned the largest viewing share of any digital channel ever in the United Kingdom. But it all started 22 years ago….

Two writers by the names of Rob Grant and Doug Naylor had previously been writing for Canned Carrott, and had also been the main driving force behind Spitting Image for many years, writing the world-famous “chicken song”. They decided the time had come to collaborate on their own TV sitcom, and thus the concept of Red Dwarf was born.

Despite being rejected by nearly every TV company in the land, BBC Manchester decided to pick up the programme. And so two Mancunian writers, both of whom attended Eccles College like myself, in a Swinton pub I regularly drank in, wrote a series that was born in the same month, and aired in the same year as myself.

To say Red Dwarf and I have somthing of a close relationship is understatement. The fact is I fell in love with this show before I knew the facts of it’s production. Red Dwarf is to me one of the funniest programmes I’ve ever seen, and is as much an obsessive part of my life as railways, or subways, or anything else.

The British Rail Class 142…

My most  beloved, quirky, odd little train oh how I adore you. But the final set built entered service on this day, 22 years ago. 142 096 entered service with British Rail. Built from British Leyland bus parts, and serving the Swinton line I live near to this very day, the unit is still in service with Nothern Rail, allocated to Newton Heath.

It’s basically a bus attached to a cattle truck. It has no bogies, so you feel the bounce of every little dip and curve in the track. The seats are 1980′s British Leyland bus seats, and the temperature is either “very hot” or “very cold”. But yet I am in love. They have such a nice look, make such a great noise, squeel when you thrash them round a bend…

Most importantly they’re fun. I’d rather travel on this than anything else running on the network today. It brings back nostalga, memories of family trips out and loitering around tracksides with Tom Appleby as a kid spotting trains. It was a fun time, full of childhood wonder that stays with me to this very day.

Star Trek: The Next Generation….

TNG came to our fine shores in 1988 to start a whole new world of exploration. The British Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the Federation Starship Enterprise took a role that would not only redefine a franchise for decades to come, but the lives of millions of people around the world.

And the effect this show had on me is no less profound than anything else I care to mention. It taught me to think, realise that problems had solutions, and that people of all races and backgrounds could co-operate and live peacefully. It tought me morality, science, humor, creative thinking. It taught me everything that makes me what I am.

Before I discovered this show I was a rebel and a tearaway. I’ve gone well off the rails again since in many ways, but fundamentally my spirit of exploring my country, and hopefully now I have a bit of money, the world,  came from Star Trek. Every time I do a kind act it comes down to what I learned from Star Trek. And everytime I do somthing evil I feel the need to throw myself in the Brig and throw things at that funky blue forcefeild.

Had I not discovered this show I don’t know what would have happened. But I know things would be different, and for that I’m forever greatful to Gene Roddenberry for the gift he gave us all.