O Brother- Where Art Thou?
I sent an email-post at 11:11 this morning and it hasn't shown up on my blog. Has anyone seen it? I bet it appears at a completely random time!
D'oh
D'oh
Thursday, October 28
Ahhhhhh; My EYE!!!! I Can See Why Arthur Doesn't Like Thursdays
Ow! Today is not going well. I got into work late to find the system down (and a list of messages from users telling me that the system was down). Fixed it...or so I thought. Then certain parts of it weren't working. So we scheduled some downtime (we thought it'd be 5-10 mins). An hour later we think we've *kinda* fixed the problem. Phew. What a 3-hours that was. And I just decided to plug in my laptop and mp3 player...while I was doing that a power lead flicked round and caught me IN the eye. Yep, not the eye-socket, full-on in my OPEN eye. Ow!
Aaaaanyways. I've decided to have a bit of a break from the madness and fill you in on the life and times of Tristan Thompson over the past couple of days.
Tuesday Went...
...along these lines. I went for my piano lesson but Nick's car broke down so he had to cancel (he was waiting for over 2 hours for the RAC to turn up! D'oh!). Since I was already at the church at this point I decided to practice, and managed to get a couple of hours in...I carried on with the chord sequence he gave me (a Ron Kenoly song?) and added some melody to it and stuff..was fun! Also practiced a bit of my first grade 1 piece, but seeing as I'm getting really bored of it, I decided to make a start on my second one ("In the Pink") which is kinda swingy. I got about half way through when I noticed that the next quarter was just a repeat! So I've done about 2/3 - 3/4 of it now! It's fun. Then I went home and had some food, and, as I thought might happen, I got tempted by cinema. I went to see 'Saw' with my bro and his mate. We got there just as it was starting (around 19:45ish) and it was sold out. So after checking some other cinema times (technology is sooooo cool!) we decided to go the the 10pm showing and kill some time in the bowling alley. We played some pool and went to Sainsbury's to get some munch (massive bag of cheapy liquorice allsorts..mmm) and played the arcade game 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire'. Saw was good! Very clever - and a bit disturbing! The same kind of feel as "Seven" I'd say. Got a late night (ugch) ...
Wednesday Happened
...and an early start (double-ugch) and yesterday when I got in *all* of the systems were down. Because all of their databases are on the same server - which was knackered. Took an hour to figure out and (eventually) fix. Work was work as usual and then after work I went home and went to cinema again. Rach was organising it for some of the dancers, and she went in with some of the younger guys a bit earlier and I went in to see "Alfie" with Shaneen, her friend Esther, Nami, Gemma and Babs. When we were buying the tickets, Shaneen got ID'd! She's 21 and married!! It was really funny cuz she didn't have any ID, but she had her engagement/wedding ring, LoL. And this was right after Nami had just gotten their tickets from the same person (Nami is 16)! I quite liked Alfie, but nobody else did. I think it was a bit slow for them. I like slow films, especially when they're well made and the acting is good (this seemed well made with some very good acting!). When I went home, I watched some programme about car crime in London for a bit, and then went and read (a bit of) the new Jeffery Deaver book - "Garden of Beasts:A Novel of Berlin 1936", then went to sleep at around 23:30! Yay!
"Thursday"
As I said earlier, today has been a nightmare. Things seem to be a bit more settled now, but roll on lunchtime I say! And tonight! Yay! Nathan, Adam and myself are going to see "Twelfth Night" at the Bristol Old Vic tonight - we're having some food at Wagamama's beforehand. I've been there once before when I was visiting some friends in Kingston, Surrey and haven't been since. And NO, we're not going to Surrey for food - this is the 'Bristol' Wagamama's. OH, you weren't going to ask that? Never mind - at least you know now. And now. And now again. And again, now. Still now. And then. And now. *cough*-*cough*. Ahem.
Listening To: Not sure who's singing..it's not Mercy Me - "I Can Only Imagine" (Soul Survivor 2003 - Anthem of the Free)
Was Listening To: Red Hot Chili Peppers - "Pretty Little Ditty" (Mother's Milk) and Green Day - "Basket Case" (Dookie) (not a the same time. Sequentially [to a computer person I was listening to them in series, not in parallel])
PS - I've tried emailing this post twice today..now I've just published it directly. If it appears twice more, I will delete the extra ones!
Aaaaanyways. I've decided to have a bit of a break from the madness and fill you in on the life and times of Tristan Thompson over the past couple of days.
Tuesday Went...
...along these lines. I went for my piano lesson but Nick's car broke down so he had to cancel (he was waiting for over 2 hours for the RAC to turn up! D'oh!). Since I was already at the church at this point I decided to practice, and managed to get a couple of hours in...I carried on with the chord sequence he gave me (a Ron Kenoly song?) and added some melody to it and stuff..was fun! Also practiced a bit of my first grade 1 piece, but seeing as I'm getting really bored of it, I decided to make a start on my second one ("In the Pink") which is kinda swingy. I got about half way through when I noticed that the next quarter was just a repeat! So I've done about 2/3 - 3/4 of it now! It's fun. Then I went home and had some food, and, as I thought might happen, I got tempted by cinema. I went to see 'Saw' with my bro and his mate. We got there just as it was starting (around 19:45ish) and it was sold out. So after checking some other cinema times (technology is sooooo cool!) we decided to go the the 10pm showing and kill some time in the bowling alley. We played some pool and went to Sainsbury's to get some munch (massive bag of cheapy liquorice allsorts..mmm) and played the arcade game 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire'. Saw was good! Very clever - and a bit disturbing! The same kind of feel as "Seven" I'd say. Got a late night (ugch) ...
Wednesday Happened
...and an early start (double-ugch) and yesterday when I got in *all* of the systems were down. Because all of their databases are on the same server - which was knackered. Took an hour to figure out and (eventually) fix. Work was work as usual and then after work I went home and went to cinema again. Rach was organising it for some of the dancers, and she went in with some of the younger guys a bit earlier and I went in to see "Alfie" with Shaneen, her friend Esther, Nami, Gemma and Babs. When we were buying the tickets, Shaneen got ID'd! She's 21 and married!! It was really funny cuz she didn't have any ID, but she had her engagement/wedding ring, LoL. And this was right after Nami had just gotten their tickets from the same person (Nami is 16)! I quite liked Alfie, but nobody else did. I think it was a bit slow for them. I like slow films, especially when they're well made and the acting is good (this seemed well made with some very good acting!). When I went home, I watched some programme about car crime in London for a bit, and then went and read (a bit of) the new Jeffery Deaver book - "Garden of Beasts:A Novel of Berlin 1936", then went to sleep at around 23:30! Yay!
"Thursday"
As I said earlier, today has been a nightmare. Things seem to be a bit more settled now, but roll on lunchtime I say! And tonight! Yay! Nathan, Adam and myself are going to see "Twelfth Night" at the Bristol Old Vic tonight - we're having some food at Wagamama's beforehand. I've been there once before when I was visiting some friends in Kingston, Surrey and haven't been since. And NO, we're not going to Surrey for food - this is the 'Bristol' Wagamama's. OH, you weren't going to ask that? Never mind - at least you know now. And now. And now again. And again, now. Still now. And then. And now. *cough*-*cough*. Ahem.
Listening To: Not sure who's singing..it's not Mercy Me - "I Can Only Imagine" (Soul Survivor 2003 - Anthem of the Free)
Was Listening To: Red Hot Chili Peppers - "Pretty Little Ditty" (Mother's Milk) and Green Day - "Basket Case" (Dookie) (not a the same time. Sequentially [to a computer person I was listening to them in series, not in parallel])
PS - I've tried emailing this post twice today..now I've just published it directly. If it appears twice more, I will delete the extra ones!
Tuesday, October 26
Tuesday's Gone With The Wind
Today I have been mostly....
...fixing someone else's system in Endsleigh. Nice, 3.5 hours on the phone and all it took to fix was 2 check-boxes! Have you ever heard the story about a big factory that breaks down? They call in an Engineer, who wanders around, looking at the pipes and looking thoughtful. After about 15 minutes, he walks up to a particular pipe and taps it with a hammer. The factory roars into life. The engineer writes out an invoice and hands it to the factory manager.
"£1000 !?!??!?" exclaims the manager, "What's that for? All you did was tap a pipe!"
"Well," says the engineer, "that was 50p for tapping the pipe, and £999.50 for knowing where to tap it"
That story is so true! All I did to fix the system was un-check two boxes, and that was 3.5 hours work! (albeit there was a lot of investigation)...I reckon that 3.5 hours of my professional time is...*figures it out*...£35? And everyone at work reckons we're underpaid as it is! Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if my company billed them a hundred quid for those few hours, LoL.
Ahem - anyways, where was I with the recap on the weekend? *reads* Ahhh, Sunday night. Okay, here we go (brace yourselves...)
Monday - the Mother of all days
Work as usual on Monday - I still didn't feel too ill after my miracle sleep on Sunday afternoon. Still had a cough, but I can live with that. I spent most of the day creating a 'printer friendly' version of a report that meant that it went down from 5 pages to 2 and a bit. Most of the reports will be 2 pages. I had to get it done by the end of the day so that Bob could demo it when he went down to Plymouth on Tuesday. There was about half an hour until hometime and I was just in the finishing stages of the report, when a user phoned complaining that a certain part of the system wasn't working. So I was busily trying to fix that so that I could get on with the report when Dave asked if I could help with the system in Endsleigh. I told him I couldn't because I had x & y to do before going home but that I could do it tomorrow (Tuesday)
[digression] You know when you eat a mint and then have a drink of cold water - isn't that a really refreshing feeling? [/digression]
K, so I fixed the system, finished the report and printed it off for Bob. I had to go home home and finish off the PA notes that I'd started at lunchtime (yes, I had left it late again to do my equippers stuff - though I had prepared in my head what I was going to do, so it wasn't too bad). From the time I got home (17:00ish) until about 19:10 I was doing PA notes (with a brief break for tea). Then rushed up to the building (church), photocopied the notes, and sat down for the teaching. Ahhh [Bisto?]. We didn't actually finish the teaching thing until about 21:30!! So I went through the PA stuff as quickly as possible. I think it went quite well. Next week I have to do one-to-ones with each member of the PA team (scary!). After that I got tempted by Risk at Nige&Esther's, so I went there and watched them for a bit. Other people there were; Nigel, Esther, Adam, Nami, Gemma, Adam, Luke Radford and myself. Me and Gemma were just watching (or playing with little soldiers and horses and cannons and stuff. I was holding Luke's horse and some troops hostage under a wine glass and demanding that he perform memory tricks. He managed to tell us what he was doing on that day 4 years ago, and also who came 1st, 2nd and 3rd in the F1 Grand Prix that week!). I stayed far too late in the end and ended up getting sleep around 1...ugh.
-----Snoozy, Snoozy, Sleepy, Sleepy-----
..zzzZzZzZ
Today was today! I think it's a night in for me tonight (after a piano lesson at 17:30) to do some church web site stuff. Tomorrow night Rach is organising cinema for some of the new Christians from dance, so I'm thinkin' of skipping cinema tonight...though I could be tempted by Alien vs. Predator...
...fixing someone else's system in Endsleigh. Nice, 3.5 hours on the phone and all it took to fix was 2 check-boxes! Have you ever heard the story about a big factory that breaks down? They call in an Engineer, who wanders around, looking at the pipes and looking thoughtful. After about 15 minutes, he walks up to a particular pipe and taps it with a hammer. The factory roars into life. The engineer writes out an invoice and hands it to the factory manager.
"£1000 !?!??!?" exclaims the manager, "What's that for? All you did was tap a pipe!"
"Well," says the engineer, "that was 50p for tapping the pipe, and £999.50 for knowing where to tap it"
That story is so true! All I did to fix the system was un-check two boxes, and that was 3.5 hours work! (albeit there was a lot of investigation)...I reckon that 3.5 hours of my professional time is...*figures it out*...£35? And everyone at work reckons we're underpaid as it is! Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if my company billed them a hundred quid for those few hours, LoL.
Ahem - anyways, where was I with the recap on the weekend? *reads* Ahhh, Sunday night. Okay, here we go (brace yourselves...)
Monday - the Mother of all days
Work as usual on Monday - I still didn't feel too ill after my miracle sleep on Sunday afternoon. Still had a cough, but I can live with that. I spent most of the day creating a 'printer friendly' version of a report that meant that it went down from 5 pages to 2 and a bit. Most of the reports will be 2 pages. I had to get it done by the end of the day so that Bob could demo it when he went down to Plymouth on Tuesday. There was about half an hour until hometime and I was just in the finishing stages of the report, when a user phoned complaining that a certain part of the system wasn't working. So I was busily trying to fix that so that I could get on with the report when Dave asked if I could help with the system in Endsleigh. I told him I couldn't because I had x & y to do before going home but that I could do it tomorrow (Tuesday)
[digression] You know when you eat a mint and then have a drink of cold water - isn't that a really refreshing feeling? [/digression]
K, so I fixed the system, finished the report and printed it off for Bob. I had to go home home and finish off the PA notes that I'd started at lunchtime (yes, I had left it late again to do my equippers stuff - though I had prepared in my head what I was going to do, so it wasn't too bad). From the time I got home (17:00ish) until about 19:10 I was doing PA notes (with a brief break for tea). Then rushed up to the building (church), photocopied the notes, and sat down for the teaching. Ahhh [Bisto?]. We didn't actually finish the teaching thing until about 21:30!! So I went through the PA stuff as quickly as possible. I think it went quite well. Next week I have to do one-to-ones with each member of the PA team (scary!). After that I got tempted by Risk at Nige&Esther's, so I went there and watched them for a bit. Other people there were; Nigel, Esther, Adam, Nami, Gemma, Adam, Luke Radford and myself. Me and Gemma were just watching (or playing with little soldiers and horses and cannons and stuff. I was holding Luke's horse and some troops hostage under a wine glass and demanding that he perform memory tricks. He managed to tell us what he was doing on that day 4 years ago, and also who came 1st, 2nd and 3rd in the F1 Grand Prix that week!). I stayed far too late in the end and ended up getting sleep around 1...ugh.
-----Snoozy, Snoozy, Sleepy, Sleepy-----
..zzzZzZzZ
Today was today! I think it's a night in for me tonight (after a piano lesson at 17:30) to do some church web site stuff. Tomorrow night Rach is organising cinema for some of the new Christians from dance, so I'm thinkin' of skipping cinema tonight...though I could be tempted by Alien vs. Predator...
32 Hour Days...
...yeah, that's what we need. 32 hour days...and I get the feeling that there *still* wouldn't be enough time. Hmm.
Anyway, I haven't updated since Friday sometime, so I thought I'd fill you in on the happenings. Not that they're interesting, it's more for completeness.
Friday Night Lads...
Okay, so on Friday I went home from work at 3pm (I love Fridays) and chilled out for a bit. I can't remember really what I did other than have a shower. I know I was feeling a bit rough though and I think I went online for a bit. Anyways, I went up to church at 7ish for ice skating..yay. I enjoy ice-skating. I'm not amazing at it, but I do like blasting around the rink (The thing with ice skating (besides the crappy skates you get that hurt and don't go straight) is that I keep getting confused with skiing. With skis on you can lean right forward and touch the tips of your skis without falling over. Which you can't do with skates. Anyways, when I go skiing I'm used to not worrying if I'm leaning too far forward, but this suddenly becomes apparent when skating. Not good.) and I love speed. Speed is great (not the drug-speed, the velocity-speed). That's why I love places like Alton Towers - especially Oblivion and Nemesis-------FASSSST!!! Ahem...I'm digressing. So, funnily enough, I had Matt, Simon, Kiera and Hannah in my car to take to the ice rink. We got there around 19:45 and had to wait until 20:20 for them to open! Luckily it turned out that only about 40 kids showed for ice skating (80 had signed up!) which was a shame because we did have a fair few that we turned down, and we had loads of spare space in the end. Ahh well. I was the only leader to put on skates (which surprised me because usually everybody's on! Though Nige does have his dodgy knee I suppose). So I went round and round and round getting dizzy and generally trying to chat to/push over youth. One point I got bored and decided to have a nice fast blast around the rink. I was building up some speed after my second lap or so, and I was completely in the clear; nobody was near me! So I accelerated into the corner. What happened I don't know, but one minute I was flying forwards, and the next I was flat on my face sliding forward with immense pain over the entire front-half of my body (and for some reason, my ear canals really hurt ???). So I got up to lots of pointy fingers and laughing, felt embarrassed, and tried to push Chris over because he had the most annoying pointy-laughy thing going on (note - 'tried'..not 'succeeded'). "Brian" wasn't skating, so I nicked her hat for a while (she reckoned she was having a bad-hair day, so I nicked her hat..being the nice chappy that I am) and skated around with it on my head. Mmm, attractive. Eventually I had pity on her (got bored of it :-P) and gave it back. At which point Simon decided that I was being a good example and promptly nicked it straight off her again..LoL. I'm so cool. Oh yeah! That's what I did after work on Friday - my Beavis&Butthead DVD arrived, so I watched that! Anyways, we got back to the building (church) at around 22:30 and just chilled for a bit. I practiced a bit on the keyboard (it sounds a million times better than the one I have at home...plus it has weighted keys...mmm). Then I collapsed at home and went to sleep.
'S' is for 'Saturday' and 'Soaked'
Saturday was the day that I was still feeling rough and decided to go to town. Or rather I decided a week or so ago to go and Saturday was the day I actually went! The weather was really wet - absolutely tipping it down! I met Tom at Superdrug where Jamie (assistant manager) was playing with a hovercraft and a remote-controlled monsters hand that could crawl along the floor...how cool! Then we went to the Old Vic first (because it was farthest) and after walking straight past it (we didn't see it), decided to take a 10-minute detour in search of it while getting thoroughly soaked! We walked across Queen's Square (open ground...very wet), along the street round the corner and back to where we started! When we got the Old Vic I had to try and get an extra ticket for Adam and try and get the three of us sitting together, and it was absolute comedy when the v.v.camp guy got in a complete flap over it. He was very helpful, but quite flappy bless him. LoL. Eventually got the tickets and walked to Sound Control. After listening to headphones for about 10-20 mins, I bought some Sennheisers for the sound desk at church (I listened to them at home laters..they're sooooo good! I want some!) and Tom bought some strings for his guitar. We also played around on some keyboards for a bit (or rather I did, drooling while playing a £3k weighted keyboard :-D..if anyone's feeling generous...). Then we went to the main shopping centre and I got some contact lenses (yeah, yeah, I'm vain, I know) and we just generally browsed for a bit while we waited for Adam. Adam had met some lady on the internet in London and she was coming up to Bristol to see her friend, and was going to spend a bit of time with Adam. So after waiting a bit, we went to lunch at Pizza Express on Park Street (found out yesterday that there's a Pizza Expression Corn Street, which would have saved a looong uphill walk) with Adam and 'his woman'. I was dead impressed with Pizza Express - very nice, and not *too* expensive! Tasty. After that, went home and collapsed for a couple of hours (walking around in the rain with a cold for 5 hours isn't a good idea!). I can't remember what I did on Saturday night - I think I just stayed in *shock!* I definitely remember falling asleep while watching Pirates of the Caribbean in my bro's room.
Sunday. Church.
Well, Sunday was church. I was still feeling a little bit ill, but paracetamol is my friend :) Darren, Jen and others (that I can't remember right now) had just gotten back from Ukraine, so they shared a bit. It sounds amazing - the people there sound like they're meeting the needs of their community in such a practical way! Brilliant! Darren preached a little on just getting more of a desire to do the things of God. He was saying that we all have the 'knowledge', but without the desire/passion it's just not gonna get us very far! I went forward for prayer (much needed!) and got prayed for.
After the meeting I was planning on having a bit of lunch with Tim to catch up and then go home to do some PA notes, but didn't realise it was a 'Rita' week! About once a month Rita cooks lunch for the youth in the church, and somehow I'm invited!! Actually I think it's cuz I do youth work with the guys and also to give them lifts ;) anyways, I always end up about twice the size after Rita's (her food is sooooo good and the pudding is amazing!). Had lunch, played a couple of games and then went home. Collapsed (again!) and slept for a couple of hours. After I woke up, I actually felt loads better (praise God!). I just had the annoying cough thing, but the headache was pretty much gone! Church was good in the evening. Darren changed his mind (obviously prompted by the Holy Spirit) and he preached right at the beginning, and then we had an amazing time of ministry and praise and worship. Basically it was about being undignified before men for God, so everyone was really going for it; jumping up and down, waving flags, and generally being nutters...it was great! I was absolutely shattered after it (it was really, really hot on stage for some reason and we were all sweating bucketloads!!).
When that finished we hung around at church for a bit, and then some of us went to Pizza Hut and chilled there for a bit before heading home.
I've gotta do some work now, but I'll fill you in on Monday a bit laters (told ya..not enough hours in the day...)
Anyway, I haven't updated since Friday sometime, so I thought I'd fill you in on the happenings. Not that they're interesting, it's more for completeness.
Friday Night Lads...
Okay, so on Friday I went home from work at 3pm (I love Fridays) and chilled out for a bit. I can't remember really what I did other than have a shower. I know I was feeling a bit rough though and I think I went online for a bit. Anyways, I went up to church at 7ish for ice skating..yay. I enjoy ice-skating. I'm not amazing at it, but I do like blasting around the rink (The thing with ice skating (besides the crappy skates you get that hurt and don't go straight) is that I keep getting confused with skiing. With skis on you can lean right forward and touch the tips of your skis without falling over. Which you can't do with skates. Anyways, when I go skiing I'm used to not worrying if I'm leaning too far forward, but this suddenly becomes apparent when skating. Not good.) and I love speed. Speed is great (not the drug-speed, the velocity-speed). That's why I love places like Alton Towers - especially Oblivion and Nemesis-------FASSSST!!! Ahem...I'm digressing. So, funnily enough, I had Matt, Simon, Kiera and Hannah in my car to take to the ice rink. We got there around 19:45 and had to wait until 20:20 for them to open! Luckily it turned out that only about 40 kids showed for ice skating (80 had signed up!) which was a shame because we did have a fair few that we turned down, and we had loads of spare space in the end. Ahh well. I was the only leader to put on skates (which surprised me because usually everybody's on! Though Nige does have his dodgy knee I suppose). So I went round and round and round getting dizzy and generally trying to chat to/push over youth. One point I got bored and decided to have a nice fast blast around the rink. I was building up some speed after my second lap or so, and I was completely in the clear; nobody was near me! So I accelerated into the corner. What happened I don't know, but one minute I was flying forwards, and the next I was flat on my face sliding forward with immense pain over the entire front-half of my body (and for some reason, my ear canals really hurt ???). So I got up to lots of pointy fingers and laughing, felt embarrassed, and tried to push Chris over because he had the most annoying pointy-laughy thing going on (note - 'tried'..not 'succeeded'). "Brian" wasn't skating, so I nicked her hat for a while (she reckoned she was having a bad-hair day, so I nicked her hat..being the nice chappy that I am) and skated around with it on my head. Mmm, attractive. Eventually I had pity on her (got bored of it :-P) and gave it back. At which point Simon decided that I was being a good example and promptly nicked it straight off her again..LoL. I'm so cool. Oh yeah! That's what I did after work on Friday - my Beavis&Butthead DVD arrived, so I watched that! Anyways, we got back to the building (church) at around 22:30 and just chilled for a bit. I practiced a bit on the keyboard (it sounds a million times better than the one I have at home...plus it has weighted keys...mmm). Then I collapsed at home and went to sleep.
'S' is for 'Saturday' and 'Soaked'
Saturday was the day that I was still feeling rough and decided to go to town. Or rather I decided a week or so ago to go and Saturday was the day I actually went! The weather was really wet - absolutely tipping it down! I met Tom at Superdrug where Jamie (assistant manager) was playing with a hovercraft and a remote-controlled monsters hand that could crawl along the floor...how cool! Then we went to the Old Vic first (because it was farthest) and after walking straight past it (we didn't see it), decided to take a 10-minute detour in search of it while getting thoroughly soaked! We walked across Queen's Square (open ground...very wet), along the street round the corner and back to where we started! When we got the Old Vic I had to try and get an extra ticket for Adam and try and get the three of us sitting together, and it was absolute comedy when the v.v.camp guy got in a complete flap over it. He was very helpful, but quite flappy bless him. LoL. Eventually got the tickets and walked to Sound Control. After listening to headphones for about 10-20 mins, I bought some Sennheisers for the sound desk at church (I listened to them at home laters..they're sooooo good! I want some!) and Tom bought some strings for his guitar. We also played around on some keyboards for a bit (or rather I did, drooling while playing a £3k weighted keyboard :-D..if anyone's feeling generous...). Then we went to the main shopping centre and I got some contact lenses (yeah, yeah, I'm vain, I know) and we just generally browsed for a bit while we waited for Adam. Adam had met some lady on the internet in London and she was coming up to Bristol to see her friend, and was going to spend a bit of time with Adam. So after waiting a bit, we went to lunch at Pizza Express on Park Street (found out yesterday that there's a Pizza Expression Corn Street, which would have saved a looong uphill walk) with Adam and 'his woman'. I was dead impressed with Pizza Express - very nice, and not *too* expensive! Tasty. After that, went home and collapsed for a couple of hours (walking around in the rain with a cold for 5 hours isn't a good idea!). I can't remember what I did on Saturday night - I think I just stayed in *shock!* I definitely remember falling asleep while watching Pirates of the Caribbean in my bro's room.
Sunday. Church.
Well, Sunday was church. I was still feeling a little bit ill, but paracetamol is my friend :) Darren, Jen and others (that I can't remember right now) had just gotten back from Ukraine, so they shared a bit. It sounds amazing - the people there sound like they're meeting the needs of their community in such a practical way! Brilliant! Darren preached a little on just getting more of a desire to do the things of God. He was saying that we all have the 'knowledge', but without the desire/passion it's just not gonna get us very far! I went forward for prayer (much needed!) and got prayed for.
After the meeting I was planning on having a bit of lunch with Tim to catch up and then go home to do some PA notes, but didn't realise it was a 'Rita' week! About once a month Rita cooks lunch for the youth in the church, and somehow I'm invited!! Actually I think it's cuz I do youth work with the guys and also to give them lifts ;) anyways, I always end up about twice the size after Rita's (her food is sooooo good and the pudding is amazing!). Had lunch, played a couple of games and then went home. Collapsed (again!) and slept for a couple of hours. After I woke up, I actually felt loads better (praise God!). I just had the annoying cough thing, but the headache was pretty much gone! Church was good in the evening. Darren changed his mind (obviously prompted by the Holy Spirit) and he preached right at the beginning, and then we had an amazing time of ministry and praise and worship. Basically it was about being undignified before men for God, so everyone was really going for it; jumping up and down, waving flags, and generally being nutters...it was great! I was absolutely shattered after it (it was really, really hot on stage for some reason and we were all sweating bucketloads!!).
When that finished we hung around at church for a bit, and then some of us went to Pizza Hut and chilled there for a bit before heading home.
I've gotta do some work now, but I'll fill you in on Monday a bit laters (told ya..not enough hours in the day...)
Friday, October 22
Today I Have Been Mostly Eating...
...Chunkyfruit Bars (1xApple + 1xCherry)
They're sooo good. And they don't have evil hydrogenated vegetable oil/fat in them either - yay!
I'm sugaring myself up today because I'm not feeling too good. I seem to have finally caught a bit of the bug that's been going round and I'm going to fight it with sugar and (if I find any) Vitamin C. Let the battle commence!
Let's see, what was the last thing I wrote? (it just took me 4 attempts to type 'wrote' - it's far too early to be thinking).
Hometime
I went home yesterday after work and got none of that stuff done. I went online and chatted to Jen for a bit, had some food (SpagBol - just me and Nick (my step-dad Nick [Thompson], not church-worship-leader Nick [Turrell]) eating cuz mum and Owen were working 'till 8. Not together. It was just a coincidence.). Jen wasn't online when I came back so I decided to play guitar/piano for a bit.
Meeting
Then went to youth leaders meeting thing, which turned out to be an equippers thing. So we did some discussion stuff about what a youth leader is (and isn't!), a bit about lifestyle, and a bit about our child protection policy. I didn't know that we had another session to do next week and I've booked up that night. I'm going to the Bristol Old Vic with Nathan. I mentioned it to Adam and he might be coming - I'm gonna go pick up the tickets on Saturday when I go into town (Old Vic is mileage from town, so there's going to be a lot of walking involved cuz I also need to go to Sound Control to get some headphones for the PA desk.). Yeh, so did the equippers meeting at the bookshop. Then Adam & Tom tempted me with the cinema. They were gonna see "Sky Captain" and I was gonna go, but it wasn't showing that late. And now it's stopped showing!! D'oh! Anyways, the church was open because dance was just finishing, so we wandered over there to use the 'net to find out cinema times (which was when we discovered that it wasn't really on, and neither was anything else worth staying up for!). While I was chatting to Claire about her trip to Paris (Rich - her husband - took her there as a surprise for her 21st) Tom left to get a lift home with 'Brian'.
Maccy Dee's
A bit later Rach suggested going to Maccy's for a milkshake, so Adam, Nami, Gemma, Babs, Rach and myself went to the Longwell Green Maccy's. Had a Big Mac meal with a chocolate milk shake (mmm). Gemma and Babs got happy meals and these cool flying carpets (with wheels) - so we played on them for a while...v.funny...no control whatsoever...they'd just go in random directions.
Race
Now I'm quite a fast driver - whether that's good or bad I'll leave you to decide. I don't mind looking at nice sported up cars (courtesy of Esther taking me to GTI a couple of times...heh heh), but I'm not really into all that stuff...seems like a waste of money. Anyways, as I was getting on the ring road there was this rude-boy kiddy in a sported up Ford Fiesta (I mean, a Fiesta....come on...why bother sporting one of those up?! Naa, a nice VDub thank you very much). He started pulling away, and I thought "What the heck" and tried to overtake him. I was ranting poor little Missy (my car) but we did it!...little rude-boy in his sported up car tried his hardest, but in the end was overtaken by me in my standard VW Golf Driver...ha (albeit one with a 1.8L engine..LoL)! I guess that's a throwback to my school days - rude-boys annoyed the heck out of me, LoL. Anyways, just needed to get that out of my system...don't usually race people in sported up cars but I was bored, LoL.
Wife-Swap
Got home (in record time ;-) ) and Ma, Nick & Owen were watching "Wife-Swap". Was quite funny. Some Bristolian woman who did *nothing* around the house (her husband worked all the hours under the sun and then had to come home and cook for everyone) swapped with this German lady who did *everything* around the house. Was quite interesting...'specially cuz it was a Bristolian woman, LoL. Then I went to bed cuz I was feeling shattered and a bit rough (ill).
In the Words of the Immortal Jamie Lee - MORNIN'!
Woke up this morning feeling a bit worse, but managed to make it into work on time. All the systems were working properly (well, the live ones were...the test box wasn't so had to restart the services). And now, here I am. Once again. I pour out my heart. Etc..
Tonight
Oh yeah! Tonight we're taking the youth ice-skating! Yay! I love ice skating...almost as good as skiing (well, that's a lie..skiing is a million times better). I'm told we're taking 80 kids *stunned silence*. I think the most we've taken before is about 40, so tonight should be...uh...interesting?! LoL. I'll let you know how it goes...have a nice day.
Listening to: Something Corporate - "Me And The Moon" (North)
Thursday, October 21
Geoffrey? Is that you?
Yesterday/Today...continued...
Ahh, lunch is always sooooo gooooood. I love eating..except when I'm too full. Then I feel like puking and don't enjoy eating so much. When I walked into the canteen at lunchtime there was a lush curry smell floating around, and today's special is Chicken Korma. If I knew I was going to have a late dinner tonight then I would have got it, but I knew I wouldn't be able to handle two proper meals in a day...ahh well, I had a ham, cheese, cucumber and mayo baguette, some 'Tangy Cheese' Doritos and a can of Orange Fanta instead.
Yes, so, continuing the amazingly interesting story from yesterday which I know you're all dying to know. There was this really funny bit in Resident Evil where a big-off monster thing that's being controlled by 'The Umbrella Corporation' is told to kill some cops, or 'Stars' as they appear on his in-eye display. He opens up on them and shoots all 12 of them with his massive chain gun that fires off like 10,000,000 rounds per second and, amazingly, leaves the civilian standing unscathed! Then he says (in a deep dumb monster voice) 'Stars', turns around and walks off. It was v.funny - but, again, "I guess you had to be there". Or just watch the film. That would be easier than travelling through time to 'be there' when I (and only I, out of everyone in the cinema) found it funny.
Ahem. Yes, well, drove back from the cinema and dropped Phoebe at one of her friend's ([<--] apostrophe..look Jen, look..I'm [<--] preserving them good) houses. At 11pm at night. Strange girl ;), LoL. So I went home then, went straight to sleep. After calling Jen. For a short phone call. Ish.
Then I couldn't [<--] sleep again so got up briefly and read some blogz before passing ou...uh...sleeping. For some strange reason I didn't set my alarm..even though I'm sure I did. Anyways, the weirdest thing happened. I woke up and looked at my clock (which I intentionally set 20 mins fast to scare me in the morning) and I thought it said '7:25'. Then looked at my phone and I'm sure it said '7:05'. This was earlier than I normally get up with an alarm, so I just sat on my bed for a minute looking for socks that matched. Anyways, I quickly checked my phone and it said '7:28'. Engh?!? Did I read it wrong the first time? Aswell as my clock? Or did I just lose 20 mins of my life? Did Geoffrey or Jeremy take over for 20 mins? It was just too weird and at the time I thought I must've misread my phone when I woke up, but now the more I think about it, the more I think that I lost 20 mins. Which made me 20 mins late for work. What's going on!?!?!? ach, who knows, eh? *Ralph Wiggum Voice* "I want my 20 minutes back".
So I was late to work and it's been a busy morning with various system problems and stuff, although I have migrated some mints from my car to my desk so that I can get rid of the nasty caffeine taste that gets left in my mouth by tea/coffee all the time. So that's a plus. And now I'm typing my blog.
Tonight..not happened yet...
Tonight I am planning on doing some PA notes (*shock*), but also maybe go for a 10 min run? Who knows. Maybe I'll just sleep. Then at 19:30 I've got a youth leaders' [<--] meeting at the bookshop. Don't you just wish you were me?!
Listening to: Sheryl Crow - "Redemption Day" (Sheryl Crow)
I-I-I-I Am Cornholio!!
I ordered what is possibly one of the coolest films ever made. Kindof. Anyways, I ordered 'Beavis and Butthead do America' from Play.com..it should be arriving today sometime! Huh-huh..that's pretty cool. YEaH!
Right then. Yesterday I got home from work and just chilled a bit by playing a bit of piano and guitar and stuff. Just relaxing a bit before going to stewarding-equippers meeting to show them some basics of PA so that they can do stuff like put a CD on and get the hand-held mic working. Phoebe phoned me asking if I wanted to go cinema and catch up, which I thought was a good idea, so I agreed. We tried to get Hollie, Rach & Tom to come, but Hollie had double-booked, Rach was busy and Tom had already seen it (Phoebe wanted to see 'Resident Evil 2', which I already knew was going to be pants, but thought it would be worth a laugh). So I had some tea (mmm, shepherds pie is gooood), then went to the stewarding thing to show some PA to people. Only Jamie & Martin wanted to know, but that was fine by me! Finished up, and headed to Phoebe's to pick her up. Chatted to her bro & ma briefly before heading off. We went to ASDA and chatted a bit about stuff - it was really good to just catch up with her. In ASDA I bought a bag of Cadbury's Shots and a bag of ASDA Fruity Coconut Mushrooms (Mushroom, MUSH-Room. Badger-badger-badger..). Completely stuffed myself while laughing/jumping at Resident Evil (the actress who played the female cop - Valentine - was soooooo hot!! I think it was the short skirt and tube top that did it, LoL). Turns out the bloke who took our tickets - Dan - was someone I used to work with at CompuServe! Chatted to him for a bit and now have a 'contact' in the cinema...free tickets are cool..huh huh.
OOoh, it's lunch time and everyone's leaving...I'll finish this when I get back. Don't miss me too much
Listening to: Vanessa Carlton - Album (Be Not Nobody)
Wednesday, October 20
Rushing? I don't speak rushing.
Ahhh - midway through the week. I'll get a couple of hours of chill time after work today. Which is nice. Right then, back to bloggin' it. It seems by copying Jen I've set off a bit of a trend! Loz has started one (click here) and now, so has Tom (click here).
Anyway - yes, life. What happened in my life yesterday? Well, about half an hour before I left work we got a phone call from our customer at the MOD saying that he could log into his account using his normal password and also with the word 'password'. Obviously we laughed at him and thought he was crazy at first...that is until we managed to do it on our accounts. Nagh! This was bad - the whole system could get shut down....to say it was a "bit of a security risk" is like saying that the Titanic took "a bit of a knock"! So we were flapping around like headless chickens for about half an hour, until somebody told us that we should actually look at the computer to solve it instead of imitating farmyard animals. Once we got round to that we fixed it. The End (well it would be, except that when I got in this morning it was the opposite - nobody could log into the system!! It was probably unrelated, but we managed to fix that too. )
So after that I went home, had a v.v.v.v.quick shower and then dashed up to church before everyone went home at 5. My piano lesson is normally at 5:30 so I try to get there to practice a bit on the proper weighted-key keyboard (we've only got a cheapy electronic keyboard at home). Nick was already there when I got there, so he showed me some stuff he was playing around with (just generally a bit about how he goes about writing songs) and then had my lesson. We've just learned "Nothing But The Blood" (awesome Matt Redman song!), so he taught me that and then played along on the drums while I played it (or *tried* to play it - LoL). Then went over my Grade 1 piece, which I *almost* managed to do without making any mistakes - which I was well impressed with considering I hadn't played it since last Tuesday! After the lesson was over (well early..so no rush to the cinema) we just chatted about worship team stuff, PA stuff and some personal stuff - nothing I can put here cuz any old person can read this, so :-P was nice to have a chat though..working with youth you don't often get much of a chance to have proper conversations that often.
Cinema, yes, cinema is what I also commonly do on a Tuesday evening (and some Wednesdays too). Reason being that it's "Cheapy Tuesday" at Showcase and tickets are only £3.50. Up until about a month ago it was £3..and a couple of years ago it was £2.50!! that's 40% rise in 2 years!! I mean - come on! And on Wednesdays it's "Orange Wednesday" at all cinemas, which means it's buy-one-get-one-free. So we're spoiled for choice. Wednesdays are better because we can go to Vue (formerly Warner Village) which have better seats/screens. Okay, so last night I went and took some of the youth; Sam, Sarah, Gemma and Nami. I wanted to see 'Sky Captain', but unfortunately it ain't much of a chick flick so none of the girlies wanted to see that one :( Sam and Sarah wanted to see "White Chicks", so I went in with them while Gemma and Nami went in to see "Layer Cake" (I've already seen it). "White Chicks" was alright! Made me laugh in places which is always good. Also made me not laugh in other places..but hey, you can't laugh solid for 2 hours cuz otherwise your stomach would hurt too much!
When we'd finished, Sarah wanted KFC, so we went through the drive through. It was hilarious, because they've got this speaker thing to shout your order into, and when the blokey at the other end said his bit we didn't understand a word of it! All muffley and nonsense to me! Not only that but it was an Indian guy that was doing the talking, so it was nonsense in a foreign accent! I had to keep from laughing because it reminded me sooo much of the bit in "Dude, Where's My Car!" where they go through a drive through. Apparently all the gals thought of that too because they were laughing their heads off and shouting "And Then!..." (if you haven't seen the film, you won't get that!"). After much funniness I dropped everyone home and went to Asda to buy me some food for tea. Got in there, got some beer, some frozen pizzas (mmm, Chicago Deep Pan mini-pizzas), a nice chocolate pudding and some more breakfast bars for work (mmm, furniture). Then I got home - cooked/ate the pizza, but didn't get round to pudding :(
Chatted to Jen and Tom for a bit on MSN and then went to bed.
Work up, came to work, had aforementioned excitement with users, and now I'm listening to Coldplay (on my spangley new mp3 player..heh heh).
Listening to: Coldplay - "The Scientist" (Rush of Blood to the Head)
Anyway - yes, life. What happened in my life yesterday? Well, about half an hour before I left work we got a phone call from our customer at the MOD saying that he could log into his account using his normal password and also with the word 'password'. Obviously we laughed at him and thought he was crazy at first...that is until we managed to do it on our accounts. Nagh! This was bad - the whole system could get shut down....to say it was a "bit of a security risk" is like saying that the Titanic took "a bit of a knock"! So we were flapping around like headless chickens for about half an hour, until somebody told us that we should actually look at the computer to solve it instead of imitating farmyard animals. Once we got round to that we fixed it. The End (well it would be, except that when I got in this morning it was the opposite - nobody could log into the system!! It was probably unrelated, but we managed to fix that too. )
So after that I went home, had a v.v.v.v.quick shower and then dashed up to church before everyone went home at 5. My piano lesson is normally at 5:30 so I try to get there to practice a bit on the proper weighted-key keyboard (we've only got a cheapy electronic keyboard at home). Nick was already there when I got there, so he showed me some stuff he was playing around with (just generally a bit about how he goes about writing songs) and then had my lesson. We've just learned "Nothing But The Blood" (awesome Matt Redman song!), so he taught me that and then played along on the drums while I played it (or *tried* to play it - LoL). Then went over my Grade 1 piece, which I *almost* managed to do without making any mistakes - which I was well impressed with considering I hadn't played it since last Tuesday! After the lesson was over (well early..so no rush to the cinema) we just chatted about worship team stuff, PA stuff and some personal stuff - nothing I can put here cuz any old person can read this, so :-P was nice to have a chat though..working with youth you don't often get much of a chance to have proper conversations that often.
Cinema, yes, cinema is what I also commonly do on a Tuesday evening (and some Wednesdays too). Reason being that it's "Cheapy Tuesday" at Showcase and tickets are only £3.50. Up until about a month ago it was £3..and a couple of years ago it was £2.50!! that's 40% rise in 2 years!! I mean - come on! And on Wednesdays it's "Orange Wednesday" at all cinemas, which means it's buy-one-get-one-free. So we're spoiled for choice. Wednesdays are better because we can go to Vue (formerly Warner Village) which have better seats/screens. Okay, so last night I went and took some of the youth; Sam, Sarah, Gemma and Nami. I wanted to see 'Sky Captain', but unfortunately it ain't much of a chick flick so none of the girlies wanted to see that one :( Sam and Sarah wanted to see "White Chicks", so I went in with them while Gemma and Nami went in to see "Layer Cake" (I've already seen it). "White Chicks" was alright! Made me laugh in places which is always good. Also made me not laugh in other places..but hey, you can't laugh solid for 2 hours cuz otherwise your stomach would hurt too much!
When we'd finished, Sarah wanted KFC, so we went through the drive through. It was hilarious, because they've got this speaker thing to shout your order into, and when the blokey at the other end said his bit we didn't understand a word of it! All muffley and nonsense to me! Not only that but it was an Indian guy that was doing the talking, so it was nonsense in a foreign accent! I had to keep from laughing because it reminded me sooo much of the bit in "Dude, Where's My Car!" where they go through a drive through. Apparently all the gals thought of that too because they were laughing their heads off and shouting "And Then!..." (if you haven't seen the film, you won't get that!"). After much funniness I dropped everyone home and went to Asda to buy me some food for tea. Got in there, got some beer, some frozen pizzas (mmm, Chicago Deep Pan mini-pizzas), a nice chocolate pudding and some more breakfast bars for work (mmm, furniture). Then I got home - cooked/ate the pizza, but didn't get round to pudding :(
Chatted to Jen and Tom for a bit on MSN and then went to bed.
Work up, came to work, had aforementioned excitement with users, and now I'm listening to Coldplay (on my spangley new mp3 player..heh heh).
Listening to: Coldplay - "The Scientist" (Rush of Blood to the Head)
Tuesday, October 19
Moi? A Nerd?
Good morning people! How are we on this fine morning? Well, it's been a pretty good bunch of hours since I last updated this blog - even if they were a bit panicky at times. I got home yesterday and there it was - my mp3 player! Yay. All I had to do was put the battery in and charge it...uh...that is if I knew where the charger was. D'oh! I can't remember if I mentioned before but some work is being (re)done on my room so I've moved into the spare room. All my stuff is in boxes and I couldn't for the life of me find the flaming charger (yes...it has flames. They make it charge quicker I guess). Oh well, no time for that...I had to get to church before 5 so that I could play with PA stuff and type up some notes for the training that evening.
I got up to church, got some PA together and set up in the crèche. The idea was to train the PA guys on gain/fade, EQ and a bit on feedback. It's a lot easier to just demonstrate than to just give notes, so I spent some time played around with PA (cuz I'm not that experienced with that side of things either! All theory me!). One of the things I decided to do was to play them tones of different frequencies. I think I overdid it/had it too loud because my ears are still ringing now! Owch! Anyways, I was still typing up notes at 7pm when Nick got back to church! I quickly printed it, helped him put out some chairs and was just getting him to proof read it when I got a text from Alicia asking if I was still going to give her a lift....Aaaaargh! It was 7:25. Luckily Loz was there (lifesaver!) and she helped me out by doing some photocopies of the notes while I went to pick up Alicia. Got back before they started (praise God for our lateness!...don't tell Darren I said that, LoL) and managed to relax a bit while Mark did some teaching about being an example on the worship team and living a Godly life. The PA training seemed to go much better than I expected! The guys seemed to get a lot out of it and hopefully it'll give them a bit more confidence to play around on the desk a bit more. Had a chat with Paul afterwards who gave a bit of feedback on how the meeting went Sunday (disaster from a PA point of view!!) and how some of the other guys are doing. Then I packed away all of the equipment that was used and made sure everything was tidy. By then it was almost 11pm, so I decided to treat myself (I hadn't had any tea) and get a Miss Millie's on the way home...mmmm, Chicken-in-a-bun with hash brown.
Got home - MUNCHED!!!!! Then rang Jen and chatted for a while before trying to go to sleep. You know when you're lying in bed, but can't get to sleep because you've got stuff on your mind? Well, as I was lying there I decided to have a last-ditch effort at finding my mp3 charger. I made loads of noise dragging out all my boxes of stuff, and in the bottom-most one, there it was! Yay! Fired up my laptop, and left it transferring all my mp3s over while I went to sleep - Yay!
Got up, came to work and now I'm listening to tunes! Double-yay! I promised some of the youth that I'd take them to the cinema tonight. Hmm, I wonder what's on...
Listening to: Third Day - "God of Wonders" (Offerings II)
Monday, October 18
It's Aliv...uh Arrived!
It's here (well, at home..I'm at work)! My mp3 player has finally arrived. I just checked the parcel tracking site and it says it was delivered and signed for by 'THOMPSON'. Yay! Now all I have to do is resist the urge to play with it when I get home. Must...do...PA...preparation...
25 mins till mp3 player time (home time!)....Yeah baby yeah! Groovy! Better get on with things so I can leave work on time.
Listening to: Aerosmith - "Nine Lives" (Specifically "Ain't That A Bitch")
Monday's Child is fair of face...
Well, my mp3 player still hasn't arrived, however the order tracking thing reckons it's on the van to deliver today. I went home for lunch in case it had arrived, but it hadn't - ah well. Soon, my prrreciousss. Sssssoon. Those nasty postmenses can't keeps you forever, can they preciousss?
Ahem.
Better get back to work now.
Sunday, October 17
Stuff Happened - Part II
Sunday - Alton Towers
Wow, well what can I say? Alton Towers was awesome! Was up at 06:30 to pick Simon, Matt, Kiera and Jess up from church at 06:45. As usual, I was a lil bit late (5 mins), but it was alright cuz Kiera and Jess were later - LoL. We just about made it to the bus for 7:15 and immediately nabbed the back seat. It was kinda nice being with the youth (they're all in Y10) as a non-youth leader. Could just relax and not be too responsible and get to know them a bit better. We got to Alton towers at about 10:15 am and went straight to the newest ride - Spinball whizzer (which is v.close to the entrance - it wasn't too bad a ride either!). Unfortunately most of the people coming through the gates had already had the same idea, so we ended up queuing for it for 1½ hours! But after that was when the fun really began - we managed to get 13 goes in on rides during the day - probably the most I've ever done! Here's a list of the rides we went on (and the order we went on them):
Okay, so we didn't end up late for the coach (well, we were, but only by about 5-10 mins, and they hadn't left without us) and I got home around 21:30 where collapsed into bed (after MSN-ing for 10 mins and writing an email). I fell asleep around 10:30 and slept like a log until my alarm went off for work at 06:30. I think that's the longest night's sleep I've had in a loooooooong time, and it felt sooo good :)
Wow, well what can I say? Alton Towers was awesome! Was up at 06:30 to pick Simon, Matt, Kiera and Jess up from church at 06:45. As usual, I was a lil bit late (5 mins), but it was alright cuz Kiera and Jess were later - LoL. We just about made it to the bus for 7:15 and immediately nabbed the back seat. It was kinda nice being with the youth (they're all in Y10) as a non-youth leader. Could just relax and not be too responsible and get to know them a bit better. We got to Alton towers at about 10:15 am and went straight to the newest ride - Spinball whizzer (which is v.close to the entrance - it wasn't too bad a ride either!). Unfortunately most of the people coming through the gates had already had the same idea, so we ended up queuing for it for 1½ hours! But after that was when the fun really began - we managed to get 13 goes in on rides during the day - probably the most I've ever done! Here's a list of the rides we went on (and the order we went on them):
- Spinball Whizzer
- Oblivion
- Submission
- Enterprise
- Black Hole
- Hex (kindof a ride I guess...)
- Nemesis
- Ripsaw (2x)
- Air
- The 'Flume' (formerly the Log Flume, but now it's bathtubs instead of logs(!?!?))
- Oblivion (2 more times!)
Okay, so we didn't end up late for the coach (well, we were, but only by about 5-10 mins, and they hadn't left without us) and I got home around 21:30 where collapsed into bed (after MSN-ing for 10 mins and writing an email). I fell asleep around 10:30 and slept like a log until my alarm went off for work at 06:30. I think that's the longest night's sleep I've had in a loooooooong time, and it felt sooo good :)
Saturday, October 16
Stuff Happened - Part I
Okay, I'm cheating. It says it's 23:03 on Saturday night, but I'm doing this on Monday morning - I figure it's easier to read if I break it up into the days stuff happened :)
Friday Night
Right - so..'Yesterday' was a pretty good day! Work was good - got a lot done on my user creation utility. It took a fair bit of work to get it working and caused much frustration at one point, but I'm v.happy with how it's going (when I program something, I distrust anything that pretty much works first time..it's not natural). The idea for last night was that a few of us were going round to Lyn G's place and she was going to cook us some food. Adam and myself have been on at her for a very long time for this (in a jokey kinda way). Maz and Loz go there quite a lot and decided to take the bull by the horns and invite us, thinking that we'd have to go to youth...ha ha...they made the fatal mistake of giving us 2 weeks notice! We could skank off of youth for the night and get a free meal..bargain! On the way to Lyn's I stopped off at youth for 15 mins (I couldn't resist...LoL..I actually enjoy it really - but don't tell anyone ;) ) to arrange for Alton Towers on Sunday with Simon (who was buying the tickets for everyone).
The off to Lyn's where we had so much food it was unbelievable! The people at Lyn's were: Lyn, Maz, Loz, Rachel Anders, Adam and myself. We had LOADs of curry and some fine pudding (Strudel with chocolate ice cream and double cream...mmmm...fattening). We played this cool game where you are in two teams. You have the names of loads of famous people in a bowl and have to get the rest of the team to guess as many of them as you can in a minute. Anyways, my team was Loz, Lyn and yours truly and (obviously) the other team was Adam, Maz and Rach. Luckily (for us) Adam isn't that great at remembering the names of famous people and it led to a couple of comic situations. A line that will forever live in my memory is:
Maz - tries to describe someone (and has admittedly gone off at a tangent because they weren't getting who it was)
Adam: **waving arms** "YOU'RE NOT MAKING ANY SENSE TO ME!!!"
Ahhh - another case of "You had to be there" I guess. LoL never mind.
Jen rang me at some point (after a pre-emptive text message) and I heard Delierious live singing "Every Little Thing's Gonna Be Alright". She was at the Delirious concert in Exeter - arrrrrghhhh - twice I've missed them in one week! LoL
After all that I went home at around 23:30 and tried to get some sleep - I was getting up early and driving (with the rest of my family) to London for Kelly's (she's my cousin) son's Christening. His name is Dexter - which I now think is a pretty cool name!
Slept
Saturday 07:30
Woke up - sent text to wake a certain person up ;)
Managed to leave the house at around 9am after a yummy sausage sandwich. Mmm - thanks Ma! Got to London at around 11:15 (made pretty good time!) and went to Ros and John's to wait for a bit. I had to be at the church a bit earlier than 12 (when the Christening started) because Kelly had asked me to do a reading! The priest came out before the service and was the coolest Catholic priest I have ever seen (besides Father Ted of course ;) )! He was in his late 20s, had trendy glasses on, a pony tail and jeans on! LoL. When he came out for the service he was wearing a v.cool white robe with a white sash across him. When he sat down, we glimpsed that he still had jeans on underneath! He was also foreign - I couldn't tell where from. Spain maybe?
Because it was a Catholic church we had everything written for us in 'The Baptism Book' and the bit that I read out was a prayer asking God to bless the parents/Godparents/child. After every bit I said 'Lord hear us' and the congregation had to respond 'Lord graciously hear us' which I thought was cool (only cuz I was the guy at the front though..LoL). Then we went back to Kelly & Pauls and again, ate loads and LOADS! Food is great! All the family were there and it was great to see them all again. It was my first time to see Dexter and he is soooooo cute! He's got this massive toothless grin which is just priceless! He loved having the water poured over his head! LoL.
We (me and Owen) left at around 3pm. I was sooo tired - I always feel like falling asleep at that time after lunch, so when we got to Reading services I pulled in and slept for about 30 mins. Then we went in and had a coffee and I was wide awake after that! On the way back we saw a 6mile tailback going the other way on the M4. At the start of it was a massive lorry trailer on fire! Looked like a bomb had hit it!
Got back to Bristol around 18:45 and had to go straight out to Bruce and Cat's for some games and stuff. On the way I picked up Dan and Tom and got there around 8ish - we were half an hour late but nobody else was there yet! Managed to just chill out the whole night and play games and stuff (that name game again and Cranium). And yer, we lost both games. Grr...so close!
Well, that's all for 'today'. Gotta get an 'early night' cuz I'm going to Alton Towers 'tomorrow'.
Friday Night
Right - so..'Yesterday' was a pretty good day! Work was good - got a lot done on my user creation utility. It took a fair bit of work to get it working and caused much frustration at one point, but I'm v.happy with how it's going (when I program something, I distrust anything that pretty much works first time..it's not natural). The idea for last night was that a few of us were going round to Lyn G's place and she was going to cook us some food. Adam and myself have been on at her for a very long time for this (in a jokey kinda way). Maz and Loz go there quite a lot and decided to take the bull by the horns and invite us, thinking that we'd have to go to youth...ha ha...they made the fatal mistake of giving us 2 weeks notice! We could skank off of youth for the night and get a free meal..bargain! On the way to Lyn's I stopped off at youth for 15 mins (I couldn't resist...LoL..I actually enjoy it really - but don't tell anyone ;) ) to arrange for Alton Towers on Sunday with Simon (who was buying the tickets for everyone).
The off to Lyn's where we had so much food it was unbelievable! The people at Lyn's were: Lyn, Maz, Loz, Rachel Anders, Adam and myself. We had LOADs of curry and some fine pudding (Strudel with chocolate ice cream and double cream...mmmm...fattening). We played this cool game where you are in two teams. You have the names of loads of famous people in a bowl and have to get the rest of the team to guess as many of them as you can in a minute. Anyways, my team was Loz, Lyn and yours truly and (obviously) the other team was Adam, Maz and Rach. Luckily (for us) Adam isn't that great at remembering the names of famous people and it led to a couple of comic situations. A line that will forever live in my memory is:
Maz - tries to describe someone (and has admittedly gone off at a tangent because they weren't getting who it was)
Adam: **waving arms** "YOU'RE NOT MAKING ANY SENSE TO ME!!!"
Ahhh - another case of "You had to be there" I guess. LoL never mind.
Jen rang me at some point (after a pre-emptive text message) and I heard Delierious live singing "Every Little Thing's Gonna Be Alright". She was at the Delirious concert in Exeter - arrrrrghhhh - twice I've missed them in one week! LoL
After all that I went home at around 23:30 and tried to get some sleep - I was getting up early and driving (with the rest of my family) to London for Kelly's (she's my cousin) son's Christening. His name is Dexter - which I now think is a pretty cool name!
Slept
Saturday 07:30
Woke up - sent text to wake a certain person up ;)
Managed to leave the house at around 9am after a yummy sausage sandwich. Mmm - thanks Ma! Got to London at around 11:15 (made pretty good time!) and went to Ros and John's to wait for a bit. I had to be at the church a bit earlier than 12 (when the Christening started) because Kelly had asked me to do a reading! The priest came out before the service and was the coolest Catholic priest I have ever seen (besides Father Ted of course ;) )! He was in his late 20s, had trendy glasses on, a pony tail and jeans on! LoL. When he came out for the service he was wearing a v.cool white robe with a white sash across him. When he sat down, we glimpsed that he still had jeans on underneath! He was also foreign - I couldn't tell where from. Spain maybe?
Because it was a Catholic church we had everything written for us in 'The Baptism Book' and the bit that I read out was a prayer asking God to bless the parents/Godparents/child. After every bit I said 'Lord hear us' and the congregation had to respond 'Lord graciously hear us' which I thought was cool (only cuz I was the guy at the front though..LoL). Then we went back to Kelly & Pauls and again, ate loads and LOADS! Food is great! All the family were there and it was great to see them all again. It was my first time to see Dexter and he is soooooo cute! He's got this massive toothless grin which is just priceless! He loved having the water poured over his head! LoL.
We (me and Owen) left at around 3pm. I was sooo tired - I always feel like falling asleep at that time after lunch, so when we got to Reading services I pulled in and slept for about 30 mins. Then we went in and had a coffee and I was wide awake after that! On the way back we saw a 6mile tailback going the other way on the M4. At the start of it was a massive lorry trailer on fire! Looked like a bomb had hit it!
Got back to Bristol around 18:45 and had to go straight out to Bruce and Cat's for some games and stuff. On the way I picked up Dan and Tom and got there around 8ish - we were half an hour late but nobody else was there yet! Managed to just chill out the whole night and play games and stuff (that name game again and Cranium). And yer, we lost both games. Grr...so close!
Well, that's all for 'today'. Gotta get an 'early night' cuz I'm going to Alton Towers 'tomorrow'.
Friday, October 15
MP3, Lies and Video Tape
It's Friiiiiiiii-dayyyyyyyy. YeaH! And praise God I've been healthy this week in spite of the fact that *everyone* is trying to infect me with this cold thing...even someone in Devon has been ill! (you know who you are :-P).
I never did see that film 'Sex, Lies and Videotape' - any good anyone? Aaaaanyways, I got an email from Creative yesterday saying they'd dispatched my replacement mp3 player - yay! Hopefully it'll get here before I go to London tomorrow so I can listen to my music on the way there and back, otherwise I've got 5 hours of driving in one day, and while Owen is good company, I think music would be a Very Good Thing to have ;)
Last night then. Yes, last night is what I'll talk about. Last night I got home from work and...uh...*tries to remember*..I think I just practiced piano a bit and stuff. Had a shower, had food and picked up Mark to go to Claire (Rycroft's) surprise 21st birthday party. We were meant to be there by 8, and I got thoroughly lost because they've just moved into a new house. I mean honestly, why are there dark country lanes in the middle of a city!??? And why aren't they on my A-Z!????? Anyways, after much driving-running-driving-running-phoning-running, we finally got there at around 8:10. I was worried because I didn't want to be late and ruin the surprise - but more fool me! She didn't turn up for another 45 mins! LoL. The party was good - plenty of nibbles, chatting and merriment. Rich (Rycroft) has one of those new DVD Vidcams! It was sooo cool..picture quality was great! Was very surprised! They had a vid of running around and stuff, and it didn't skip at all!
(Jedi-Emperor Voice) Impressive, Young One.
The home-vid we watched was actually a sort of Blair-witch rip off thing they did the other day where they chatted and then went into the woods to prove they weren't scared...and of course everybody died! Some memorable lines from the movie (I may be paraphrasing here)....
Rich: "Guys, I think the Stream of Blood is just ahead - that's what the sign on the gate said."
Darren (at several points in the film): "Stupid woman."
Darren : "Rich, no! You don't want to look. There's....bits."
Claire (while still running in camera shot) : **screams while "dying"**
It was one of the best films I'd seen in aaaages! LoL. Well done guys! **round of applause**
Anyways - better get some work done. Catch y'all later
Listening to: Switchfoot : The Beautiful Letdown
I never did see that film 'Sex, Lies and Videotape' - any good anyone? Aaaaanyways, I got an email from Creative yesterday saying they'd dispatched my replacement mp3 player - yay! Hopefully it'll get here before I go to London tomorrow so I can listen to my music on the way there and back, otherwise I've got 5 hours of driving in one day, and while Owen is good company, I think music would be a Very Good Thing to have ;)
Last night then. Yes, last night is what I'll talk about. Last night I got home from work and...uh...*tries to remember*..I think I just practiced piano a bit and stuff. Had a shower, had food and picked up Mark to go to Claire (Rycroft's) surprise 21st birthday party. We were meant to be there by 8, and I got thoroughly lost because they've just moved into a new house. I mean honestly, why are there dark country lanes in the middle of a city!??? And why aren't they on my A-Z!????? Anyways, after much driving-running-driving-running-phoning-running, we finally got there at around 8:10. I was worried because I didn't want to be late and ruin the surprise - but more fool me! She didn't turn up for another 45 mins! LoL. The party was good - plenty of nibbles, chatting and merriment. Rich (Rycroft) has one of those new DVD Vidcams! It was sooo cool..picture quality was great! Was very surprised! They had a vid of running around and stuff, and it didn't skip at all!
(Jedi-Emperor Voice) Impressive, Young One.
The home-vid we watched was actually a sort of Blair-witch rip off thing they did the other day where they chatted and then went into the woods to prove they weren't scared...and of course everybody died! Some memorable lines from the movie (I may be paraphrasing here)....
Rich: "Guys, I think the Stream of Blood is just ahead - that's what the sign on the gate said."
Darren (at several points in the film): "Stupid woman."
Darren : "Rich, no! You don't want to look. There's....bits."
Claire (while still running in camera shot) : **screams while "dying"**
It was one of the best films I'd seen in aaaages! LoL. Well done guys! **round of applause**
Anyways - better get some work done. Catch y'all later
Listening to: Switchfoot : The Beautiful Letdown
Thursday, October 14
Today I am mostly...
...wiping Windows 2000 from the server I installed it on a couple of days ago and installing Windows Server 2003 Professional
Sad as it is, I must admit this is quite exciting..I've never seen Windows Server 2003 Pro, so the geek in me is dying to see what it can do! Go, go go! Quicker...I want to play!
Features of Windows Server 2003
- A cool title
- the year is 3 years newer than 2000
- ability to host multiple debugging sessions in .net! (very useful seeing as we normally have to wait for the other person to stop)
- IIS 6.0
- Other things that I have no idea about!
Sad as it is, I must admit this is quite exciting..I've never seen Windows Server 2003 Pro, so the geek in me is dying to see what it can do! Go, go go! Quicker...I want to play!
Features of Windows Server 2003
- A cool title
- the year is 3 years newer than 2000
- ability to host multiple debugging sessions in .net! (very useful seeing as we normally have to wait for the other person to stop)
- IIS 6.0
- Other things that I have no idea about!
Arthur never did like Thursdays
Good morning! It's been a good day so far, and I've only been up a few hours! I've already had my breakfast bar (I munch through a lot of furniture at this job) and have heard from some lovely people already. Got an email from my Uncle Glenn this morning - Yay! He's the man! And if any of you are the people that broke into his car and stole his stuff then I'll bite your faces off Alien-styleee. GRRRRRR.
Well, aaaanyways. Got home yesterday and managed to get an hours worth of piano practice in - was great fun! Semi-learned a couple of scales (I say 'semi' because my memory is terrible...I mean I could probably play them in a few weeks, but wouldn't be able to remember that they're the A minor and...uh...see, I've forgotten already! I think it was G major. Nobody cares Tristan. Engh? Did anybody else hear that? Ah well, I guess I just imagined it. I'll just carry on typing and never re-read previous text to find out if someone said something. NEXT!
Yeah, so I practiced piano for a bit - a Grade 1 piece and a chord sequence that Nick showed me (Bm, F#m/A#, D/A, E/G#, Gmaj7, A/G, Cmaj7, and a couple of others..I could play 'em for ya, but can't remember what they're called! Nobody cares mate). Then I chilled out for a bit, congratulating myself on being so efficient and getting all that practice in. I had to be at collecting by 7pm, so was just looking for my keys at around 6:45pm when I suddenly remembered that I had to pick up Tom! Noooo, that's a 25 min round-trip! Pants, pants pants...still couldn't find my keys. Finally found them (under my laptop case!), rang Nige to see if he could ring Helen to let her (and everyone else) know that I'd be late. Rushed and got to the church around 7:15. Then had to sort people out and rush around to sort out some PA stuff for the Stewarding/Ministry team Equippers meeting that was going on - arrrrgh! Overload! It was a relief when we finally got going. We were going around a few houses that had some elderly people in them, and there was on youth (who shall henceforth remain anonymous) whom I over heard say the following while knocking....
Knock-knock
**Pause**
**Enter elderly lady peering through the glass door**
Youth: "Hi, sorry to bother you, we're from Powerhouse youth club.."
**no reaction**
Youth (louder) : "..we're collecting for National Youth Club week.."
**Lady looks vaguely worried at young kid raising his voice at her**
Youth (louder still): "..we're collecting for a minibus - we're from the church."
**Lady starts shaking her head and retreating into the house**
Youth (now shouting): "IT'S OKAY - WE'RE NOT GOING TO HARM YOU!!!"
Funny? No? As they say - "I guess you had to be there at the time". No you didn't "have to be there"; that just wasn't funny. We did better than the night before - managed to raise £122! When we'd finished collecting and stuff, Tom and myself decided to go to the cinema and watch 'Collateral' which was quite good (had more plot than I was expecting)! Because I hadn't had tea (I'm not an addict..I promise), we went to McDonald's for some food. After I ordered I turned around, and there was an old school friend! Jenny Ford! Very bizarre, both recognised at the same time..was very funny for her bloke and for Tom cuz they obviously didn't know what the heck was going on! Chatted to her briefly, and then went cinema. Got home, got to sleep (far too late). Now I'm at work. Fun.
I think that walking around at night and watching films helped my eye, because it was fine when I woke up this morning Shut-up - nobody cares about your 'theory' on eye healing methods!
Right - better get some work done About time too!.
Listening to: Delirious? World Service
Well, aaaanyways. Got home yesterday and managed to get an hours worth of piano practice in - was great fun! Semi-learned a couple of scales (I say 'semi' because my memory is terrible...I mean I could probably play them in a few weeks, but wouldn't be able to remember that they're the A minor and...uh...see, I've forgotten already! I think it was G major. Nobody cares Tristan. Engh? Did anybody else hear that? Ah well, I guess I just imagined it. I'll just carry on typing and never re-read previous text to find out if someone said something. NEXT!
Yeah, so I practiced piano for a bit - a Grade 1 piece and a chord sequence that Nick showed me (Bm, F#m/A#, D/A, E/G#, Gmaj7, A/G, Cmaj7, and a couple of others..I could play 'em for ya, but can't remember what they're called! Nobody cares mate). Then I chilled out for a bit, congratulating myself on being so efficient and getting all that practice in. I had to be at collecting by 7pm, so was just looking for my keys at around 6:45pm when I suddenly remembered that I had to pick up Tom! Noooo, that's a 25 min round-trip! Pants, pants pants...still couldn't find my keys. Finally found them (under my laptop case!), rang Nige to see if he could ring Helen to let her (and everyone else) know that I'd be late. Rushed and got to the church around 7:15. Then had to sort people out and rush around to sort out some PA stuff for the Stewarding/Ministry team Equippers meeting that was going on - arrrrgh! Overload! It was a relief when we finally got going. We were going around a few houses that had some elderly people in them, and there was on youth (who shall henceforth remain anonymous) whom I over heard say the following while knocking....
Knock-knock
**Pause**
**Enter elderly lady peering through the glass door**
Youth: "Hi, sorry to bother you, we're from Powerhouse youth club.."
**no reaction**
Youth (louder) : "..we're collecting for National Youth Club week.."
**Lady looks vaguely worried at young kid raising his voice at her**
Youth (louder still): "..we're collecting for a minibus - we're from the church."
**Lady starts shaking her head and retreating into the house**
Youth (now shouting): "IT'S OKAY - WE'RE NOT GOING TO HARM YOU!!!"
Funny? No? As they say - "I guess you had to be there at the time". No you didn't "have to be there"; that just wasn't funny. We did better than the night before - managed to raise £122! When we'd finished collecting and stuff, Tom and myself decided to go to the cinema and watch 'Collateral' which was quite good (had more plot than I was expecting)! Because I hadn't had tea (I'm not an addict..I promise), we went to McDonald's for some food. After I ordered I turned around, and there was an old school friend! Jenny Ford! Very bizarre, both recognised at the same time..was very funny for her bloke and for Tom cuz they obviously didn't know what the heck was going on! Chatted to her briefly, and then went cinema. Got home, got to sleep (far too late). Now I'm at work. Fun.
I think that walking around at night and watching films helped my eye, because it was fine when I woke up this morning Shut-up - nobody cares about your 'theory' on eye healing methods!
Right - better get some work done About time too!.
Listening to: Delirious? World Service
Wednesday, October 13
Centralisation of Information
I just had a really cool thought - if I could plug everyone into the 'net, and then link them to this blog, then I'd never have to repeat myself about what I did in the day, never have to repeat myself to about a million people when they ask what I've been up to this week. Have you ever noticed that for the first person that asks you, you give a really detailed explanation about what you did, the second person gets a slightly cut down version, then the third gets the summary..etc, etc..until whenever anyone asks you it's just reduced to a string of vaguely english-sounding syllables that sound something like "oh-the-usual"? Never noticed that? Just me then - LoL. And yes, you're right - if I just plugged everyone into this blog then I'd be being really anti-social and wouldn't get to chat to people and stuff.
So what have I been up to today? ''Oh, the usual".
Naa, today's been quite good. I was told I'm a legend and that I made someone's day yesterday which was really very nice indeed. Well done. Also managed to get cracking a bit with my User Management thing I'm doing at work. Which was nice. An that's in spite of the fact that my left eye looks like a pink planet with loads of red rivers on it and a weird black/blue circular land-mass at the front. Doesn't feel much different either - LoL - every time I come into contact with vaguely bright light, it wants desperately to close which may not be too useful when I'm driving (it's sunny out - Yay/d'oh!).
Well, I'm gonna go home and try to actually practice piano now - I haven't had enough time recently (except for last night when I accidentally wasted the whole night doing nothing...except collecting of course). Then it's collecting again and hopefully Tom will turn up. I wonder if Ma's made any food for tea...mmm...furniture....
*finds cold tea* --oooh who made this? Better drink it....*3 seconds later* Ahh..my work here is done...I can now go home.
So what have I been up to today? ''Oh, the usual".
Naa, today's been quite good. I was told I'm a legend and that I made someone's day yesterday which was really very nice indeed. Well done. Also managed to get cracking a bit with my User Management thing I'm doing at work. Which was nice. An that's in spite of the fact that my left eye looks like a pink planet with loads of red rivers on it and a weird black/blue circular land-mass at the front. Doesn't feel much different either - LoL - every time I come into contact with vaguely bright light, it wants desperately to close which may not be too useful when I'm driving (it's sunny out - Yay/d'oh!).
Well, I'm gonna go home and try to actually practice piano now - I haven't had enough time recently (except for last night when I accidentally wasted the whole night doing nothing...except collecting of course). Then it's collecting again and hopefully Tom will turn up. I wonder if Ma's made any food for tea...mmm...furniture....
*finds cold tea* --oooh who made this? Better drink it....*3 seconds later* Ahh..my work here is done...I can now go home.
Pinkeye
Good morrow! I walked into work today had the following conversation:
(Ben is Ben Stone - he has a cold and went on his industrial placement year at HP in Germany)
Me: "Guten tag Herr Stone"
Ben: "Guten Morgen! Wie gehts?"
Me: "Mmm *smile*, I can't remember any more German"
**laughter**
Ben: "You still don't have a cold then - $*%("£$%*"
Me:"If it's any consolation I think I've got an eye infection"
**pause while Ben thinks**
Ben: "It is actually"
LoL - it was funny. Such is my life - laugh all the time me :-S Aaaaanyway, lets catch up with what's happened. Didn't manage to do any more stuff on the new server at work - Richard had a meeting so I didn't know what to install, and don't have a clue how to put the server in the server rack! Went home with the intention of practicing piano, but ended up reading, chatting online and attempting to write a song...but it reminds me too much of some other song (I can't figure out which), so I gave up on it.
When I got home, I finally got round to sending my MP3 Player back to Creative to get it replaced. I bought it last November and a couple of months after that I noticed that the headphones only worked in one ear unless you wiggled the headphone jack. So reported it and Creative said I could send it back (that was January!). Never managed to get round to it - LoL, and emailed them a couple of weeks back to check that it was alright to do so - which it was! (nice one Creative). So hopefully I should have my MP3 player back working by the end of the week and can then free up 10GB on my laptop! Yay!
After tea (homemade chicken curry - mmmm) I went up to meet Nij at church to do some collecting for National Youth Club week (please donate - I accept PayPal <grin> ) by knocking on doors and asking for money. The kids were sooooo hyper, especially the lads...legging it from house to house...'twas very funny - LoL. While were at the bottom of Luke Green's road, Jen (not Jen Edwards) texted me to say she needed rescuing from someone that was lecturing her about UCAS, so I phoned her and gave her an excuse to leave the room. When we got to Luke's house I ran up and said to Claire (Luke's Mum) "Forget the money; mine's a tea with two sugars!"...would have gotten away with it, if it weren't for those meddling kids.
Anyways, we went back to church after that (we were out for about 1½ hrs) and we managed to collect about £110! Yeah! We'll have to see if we can get more tonight (we're allowed to collect all week).
***BRIEF SIDENOTE*** Was just reading the BBC web site -they (not the BBC - 'they'=Hollywood) might be bringing out an A-Team film!!! Yeah!! (click here for the article)
Ahh yes, then I got home and finally finished 'Memory' (last in the Scavenger Trilogy by K J Parker). Had a pretty cool ending - probably one of the best endings in a book that I've read for a while! Also chatted to Jen for a bit, ate some food and went to bed (early night - 23:30!)
When I woke up this morning my left eye was really sore - I thought I might have left my contact lens in, and even poked my eye a bit to try and take it out, but it wasn't there..so I was poking myself in a sore, infected eye for no reason. Stuck some eye drops in it and went to work. And here I am! Well, I'm not sure why anybody would be interested in this, but I might be in a few years so I don't really care - LoL
(Ben is Ben Stone - he has a cold and went on his industrial placement year at HP in Germany)
Me: "Guten tag Herr Stone"
Ben: "Guten Morgen! Wie gehts?"
Me: "Mmm *smile*, I can't remember any more German"
**laughter**
Ben: "You still don't have a cold then - $*%("£$%*"
Me:"If it's any consolation I think I've got an eye infection"
**pause while Ben thinks**
Ben: "It is actually"
LoL - it was funny. Such is my life - laugh all the time me :-S Aaaaanyway, lets catch up with what's happened. Didn't manage to do any more stuff on the new server at work - Richard had a meeting so I didn't know what to install, and don't have a clue how to put the server in the server rack! Went home with the intention of practicing piano, but ended up reading, chatting online and attempting to write a song...but it reminds me too much of some other song (I can't figure out which), so I gave up on it.
When I got home, I finally got round to sending my MP3 Player back to Creative to get it replaced. I bought it last November and a couple of months after that I noticed that the headphones only worked in one ear unless you wiggled the headphone jack. So reported it and Creative said I could send it back (that was January!). Never managed to get round to it - LoL, and emailed them a couple of weeks back to check that it was alright to do so - which it was! (nice one Creative). So hopefully I should have my MP3 player back working by the end of the week and can then free up 10GB on my laptop! Yay!
After tea (homemade chicken curry - mmmm) I went up to meet Nij at church to do some collecting for National Youth Club week (please donate - I accept PayPal <grin> ) by knocking on doors and asking for money. The kids were sooooo hyper, especially the lads...legging it from house to house...'twas very funny - LoL. While were at the bottom of Luke Green's road, Jen (not Jen Edwards) texted me to say she needed rescuing from someone that was lecturing her about UCAS, so I phoned her and gave her an excuse to leave the room. When we got to Luke's house I ran up and said to Claire (Luke's Mum) "Forget the money; mine's a tea with two sugars!"...would have gotten away with it, if it weren't for those meddling kids.
Anyways, we went back to church after that (we were out for about 1½ hrs) and we managed to collect about £110! Yeah! We'll have to see if we can get more tonight (we're allowed to collect all week).
***BRIEF SIDENOTE*** Was just reading the BBC web site -they (not the BBC - 'they'=Hollywood) might be bringing out an A-Team film!!! Yeah!! (click here for the article)
Ahh yes, then I got home and finally finished 'Memory' (last in the Scavenger Trilogy by K J Parker). Had a pretty cool ending - probably one of the best endings in a book that I've read for a while! Also chatted to Jen for a bit, ate some food and went to bed (early night - 23:30!)
When I woke up this morning my left eye was really sore - I thought I might have left my contact lens in, and even poked my eye a bit to try and take it out, but it wasn't there..so I was poking myself in a sore, infected eye for no reason. Stuck some eye drops in it and went to work. And here I am! Well, I'm not sure why anybody would be interested in this, but I might be in a few years so I don't really care - LoL
Tuesday, October 12
Concorde Pic...
Wow! I just found this really cool pic of a Concorde over Clifton suspension bridge! Check it out....
Today I am mostly...
...building a Plumtree Server.
We got a new server at work and no, I'm not quite sure how to go about it either, but I'm game for a laugh. Just waiting for Windows 2000 Server to install on it - watching bars move across the screen slowly isn't the most interesting thing....oooh! It's asking me to press buttons now...
Mama, I'm hu-u-ungry
It is far too early for people to be up! And I'm hungry too. Just for the record, my normal hours at work are 07:30 - 16:00 (15:00 on Fridays). When I get in I check that all the applications/systems are up and running, that they all do what they're supposed to do and that the backups backed up stuff properly the night before.It sounds more impressive than it really is; trust me, LoL. Once that's done I can turn on my laptop and surf the web (all of the systems I work on are on a different network, so we have a laptop to do development and 'research' on the internet...oh and email too ;-) ) usually - (work) email check, (personal) email check, BBC News/Dilbert check, AOB. Not that I'm into a routine or anything :-P Oh, and when the first cup of tea gets made, I eat a breakfast bar with it (Weetabix Chunky Fruit bar...mmmm). If my stomach is rumbling particularly, then I have two.
Now I've bored you to death I can say anything and it'll appear interesting! Clever eh?
Last night (PA Training) was OK. The real problem was that I didn't put enough preparation into it. The questionnaire didn't quite fill the time as I'd hoped it would, however it did raise some good points and brought some issues to light. Hopefully get some good training out of it (and I must prepare properly this time!). Nick sat in on it and saved my bacon really by going over some general hints/tips for PA. Afterwards a few of us went to the Sandringham to chill/chat for a bit - Adam, Loz, Andy (newish guy - not Andy Norman!), Maria and Tom. We played 8 games of 'Who Wants To Be A Millionaire' and didn't win a penny! How dumb is that!? Ah well, it was fun anyways.
Got home and text Jen back and forth a couple of times while reading the end of Memory (only about 35 pages to go now...yay!) and then fell asleep.
Promised Nige I'd help do collecting for National Youth Club Week tonight/tomorrow night (Delirious are playing tonight and I'm missing them :-S..lousy integrity thing...I mean honestly; why can't you back out of commitments when you find something funner to do!? LoL)
Well, I guess I'd better get some work done...
Now I've bored you to death I can say anything and it'll appear interesting! Clever eh?
Last night (PA Training) was OK. The real problem was that I didn't put enough preparation into it. The questionnaire didn't quite fill the time as I'd hoped it would, however it did raise some good points and brought some issues to light. Hopefully get some good training out of it (and I must prepare properly this time!). Nick sat in on it and saved my bacon really by going over some general hints/tips for PA. Afterwards a few of us went to the Sandringham to chill/chat for a bit - Adam, Loz, Andy (newish guy - not Andy Norman!), Maria and Tom. We played 8 games of 'Who Wants To Be A Millionaire' and didn't win a penny! How dumb is that!? Ah well, it was fun anyways.
Got home and text Jen back and forth a couple of times while reading the end of Memory (only about 35 pages to go now...yay!) and then fell asleep.
Promised Nige I'd help do collecting for National Youth Club Week tonight/tomorrow night (Delirious are playing tonight and I'm missing them :-S..lousy integrity thing...I mean honestly; why can't you back out of commitments when you find something funner to do!? LoL)
Well, I guess I'd better get some work done...
Monday, October 11
Dilemma resolved
I have resolved previous said dilemma:
I am preparing a feedback form for the PA team to fill in so that I know where they are with the whole PA thing. If we get any new guys, I'll leave the existing guys to fill in that form while I show some new guys around. If there are no new guys, then I'll join in with the existing guys and try to get some discussion started. God is great when he brings a plan together..LoL
I am preparing a feedback form for the PA team to fill in so that I know where they are with the whole PA thing. If we get any new guys, I'll leave the existing guys to fill in that form while I show some new guys around. If there are no new guys, then I'll join in with the existing guys and try to get some discussion started. God is great when he brings a plan together..LoL
Oh well, whatever, Never Mind.
Head hurts, stuff to do, 45mins to do it in :-S oh to be able to stop time and just get on with things!
Anybody out there got some PA beginners notes in case some people turn up?? How about some notes on mixing for the existing PA guys? No? Never Mind then. I'll let you know how it goes...LoL
Anybody out there got some PA beginners notes in case some people turn up?? How about some notes on mixing for the existing PA guys? No? Never Mind then. I'll let you know how it goes...LoL
Bon Jovi
I just realised why I don't listen to Bon Jovi much any more...the songs are great, but they're kinda depressing! "If you don't love me, lie to me", "Damned", "Bitter Wine", "You Give Love A Bad Name", "Bad Medicine"...blimey. I think I'll move on to the Corrs. Or maybe just listen to Bitter Wine first...that song might be a bit depressing but it is great. LoL - 'I'm a walking contradiction' (spot that song title..answers on a postcard to...)
Near Miss....
Okay, this one's an old one but it's as good a start as any.
When two planes almost collide it's called a 'Near Miss'. Why? Surely if they nearly missed then it's a hit?
*BOOOOOOOOM*
"Aww, look; they nearly missed...."
Nothing happening...
Well, work isn't that busy today. There's a bit more support work come in than usual (i.e. more than 1 thing for me to do in a day!), but I can't be bothered to get my head into the dev stuff now that I'm done with support..'specially as I'm going home in an hour and half. Hmm, when I put it like that it sounds like a bit longer.
Got worship practice tonight, only it's 'Month of Equippers' so I've got to run some PA intro stuff. If some new guys turn up I'll have to do some introductory stuff, however, if it's just the current PA team that's there, then I'll have to do some training for them, in which case planning on getting them together and just talking for a bit about what they want training on. Now here's the dillemma: I don't think any new guys will turn up, so I don't think I need to prepare for that. However, if they do I'm done-for cuz they won't have anything to do :-S Hmm...maybe I'll just prepare a *little* bit, and then I'll know what to do for the next few weeks.
I'm listening to Bon Jovi right now - always good to go back to the old favourites! "I'm wannntteddd...dead or a-live"...yeah! Used to listen to this CD non-stop!
Blather blather, yak yak..can't think of anything to say now. Maybe I should post a random question/quote for the day. Lets try to think of one...
Got worship practice tonight, only it's 'Month of Equippers' so I've got to run some PA intro stuff. If some new guys turn up I'll have to do some introductory stuff, however, if it's just the current PA team that's there, then I'll have to do some training for them, in which case planning on getting them together and just talking for a bit about what they want training on. Now here's the dillemma: I don't think any new guys will turn up, so I don't think I need to prepare for that. However, if they do I'm done-for cuz they won't have anything to do :-S Hmm...maybe I'll just prepare a *little* bit, and then I'll know what to do for the next few weeks.
I'm listening to Bon Jovi right now - always good to go back to the old favourites! "I'm wannntteddd...dead or a-live"...yeah! Used to listen to this CD non-stop!
Blather blather, yak yak..can't think of anything to say now. Maybe I should post a random question/quote for the day. Lets try to think of one...
Yummy
Had a chicken+ham melt with beans in it. tasty...mmm. Just got back to my desk and am still thinking about what to make this blog look like, or what I post here. Maybe just say whatever happens to be on my mind.
Everybody seems to be sick at the moment! Jen hasn't been feeling well, and everyone at work is recovering from cold-flu thing. Hmm. When Rich got into work this morning, he noticed I had a bit of a hoarse voice and asked if I had caught the bug too - "No!" I said..but then Ben said that I sound like he did on Friday before the bug became full-blown for him. And now I'm getting a bit of a headache...d'oh!
Well, better write a reply to Jen :) LoL. Is anybody reading this!? Doubtful..it's been up for 2 hours and I haven't told anybody about it.
Mmmm, lunch
I'm off to lunch now...just wanted to test this thing where I email the blog and it updates automatically. Very clever!
Testing, testing, one, two...
Okay, well here I am writing a blog. I used to have a journal, and I really enjoy looking back on it now and then, so I thought I'd give this a go...plus I'm copying someone..LoL.
If you *really* want to know what I'm thinking then...uh...become a mind reader?
If you *really* want to know what I'm thinking then...uh...become a mind reader?
