Is this iPod charging? I don't even know.

Since I’ve been temporarily banned from FileFront by n0e, due to my outlandish misdemeanors, I might as well write a blog, something I’ve yet again neglected to do for some time.

Ah, where to start, it’s been a funny old week. I think the most random event was the tram derailment, which suffice to say was “interesting” – never before have I witnessed such awesome stupidity, it was, my friends, truly epic. If any of you have any budding aspirations to become a tram driver, I seriously reccomend reversing on spring loaded points and hitting a overhead stantion. It’s hilarious fun.

I could go into a full blown rant about this but, eh, I don’t think I care anymore. I just love the fact that millions of our pounds were spent on a pointless new branch line that runs 650 yards, adds 10 minutes to my journey, and results in derailments on the second day of opening. This must be that “better Metrolink” that was coming. I really enjoy having to derail, then take the 33 bus, over the old system.

Anyway, enough of that. I’m sure everyone was excitied to learn that the Sheepeep, Darkclone and I met up this past weekend like the internet nerds we are for Mr. Clone’s epic birthday party doodar. There have been many frequently asked questions about this event so I thought I might summerise them here for the sake of nothing else to write about;

• We don’t call each other our usernames in real life.
• Sheep really does have pointlesly long yet awesome hair.
• I really do have none.
• Darkclone also has hair. Infact I’m quite bitter about the hair. I WANT HAIR.
• I get on with Sheep about as well in real life as I do on “the interweb” – in other words, not at all. =P
• PRECIOUS EGG-O-MATIC HOVERCRAFT
• It was a good lulz.
• Yes, every reader of this blog was together the same time, except McDermott Cube.

Finally, I need some answers on a postcard. I actually went to the trouble of purchasng an iPod some time ago (second hand, of course) and now I can’t seem to charge it. I think it’s been charging off USB for the past 3 hours but it still won’t turn on. What the hell do I do with it? I want to listen to choonz in the office. We have an iPod dock, you know. We’re a cool section.

For the record, this does not indicate any affiliation to Steve Jobs or his faulty products, I merely purchased it as a favour to someone. The fact I can’t get it working should speak volumes about it.

FOR THE CAUSE XXX

~Danny

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.