Mornin'!

Hallo. How be thee? I'm not too bad. What have you been up to lately? What have I been up to? Well, I started off the weekend by catching up on some sleep - slept until midday on Saturday (mmmm). Then had a couple of youth round and we watched 'Van Helsing' - nice wholesome film, LoL. In the evening I attempted to organise for a bunch of us to go to Weston, but couldn't get any cars, so scrapped that plan and joined Maz/Loz/Bex/Ali at the pub. Had THE BEST CHOCOLATE BROWNIE IN THE WORLD!! I thoroughly recommend it - the "Willy Wickett" in Emerson's Green does it....soooooo gooooood.

Sunday was pretty good - at church in the morning Darren & Sarah told us about the ministers' conference in Toronto that they'd just gotten back from. It sounded pretty cool! In the avo I went for a pub lunch with Timmay and had a good catch-up. Managed to get about 45 mins sleep before heading back to church for the evening! Church was really good (again) in the evening. Worship was great and Darren's preaching really touched a lot of people. I'm still trying to figure out if it was relevant to me or not...I don't think so :-S it was about people who not quite being able to relate to God properly because they had bad father figures in their lives, and they kindof expect some of the same from God. I mean, my dad lives in america and I don't see him much, but he's great! I love him to bits! He's always shown me loads of love and done everything he can for me, so he's been a great example, so I don't really think it applied that much to me. But a lot of what Darren said was quite interesting anyways.

After church a few of us went to Pizza Hut (surprise, surprise). Now we've been going for many a year now, and this was pretty much the first time that the waitress told us her name as she was seating us! We all looked at each other when she did that because I think it threw us slightly. We had two people that had NUS cards, so we tried to get 20% off the bill twice. For some reason they wouldn't let us.

Got home at about 23:30 with the intention of going straight to bed. "The Green Mile" was on telly though, and I started watching it. Stupid idiot I am. I ended up going to bed closer to 01:30...grrr. All that catching up I did on Saturday morning - wasted!! On the brighter side, I (finally) managed to get a few of my bro's albums onto my mp3 player while I was watching so that I can see if it's worth buying them (Keane, Kasabian, The Killers and Franz Ferdinand).

Got into work today to find out that when one of my work-mates set off the alarm when he came in on the weekend. He didn't realise he'd done it until a policeman started knocking at the window 10 mins after he got to work!

Speaking of work, I guess I'd better do some.

Catch you later. I must sleep now.

Listening to: Kasabian - "Ovary Stripe" (Kasabian)

The Way It Is

Life is a strange old chestnut really isn't it. We're dealt a completely random hand, shoved in a random location in the world, and left to get on with it. For some people this is pretty good. Others, not so good at all. I really thank God for the life I have, and really have nothing to complain about. Don't ask me why I just said all that. I'm just in one of those moods.

Anyways, this week I have mostly been watching films. If I see another film anytime soon I think my head is going to explode!! Tuesday I took the youth to see "Elektra"...kindof spinoff/sequel to "Daredevil". It wasn't too bad! The main character (Elektra) looked pretty fine, and the effects/action alright too! Wednesday evening I...went to the cinema! This time with Rach/Nami/Babs/Gem/Shaneen. We saw "White Noise". Since Shaneen didn't realise that this was a scary film, she hid her face through most of the scary bits. The film wasn't too bad, but nowhere near as good as "The Grudge". Now that was a scary film. Thursday I went for a curry with Adam, Andy and Nessa. Ate farrr too much, and was still full until lunchtime on Friday!

I really don't know why I keep telling you brief accounts of what I do every night. It can't be that interesting. I mean, why do you want to know that kind of stuff? I used to have a journal when I was 17/18 - it was on my computer (password protected of course), and bizzarely enough, it covered the 9 months before I was a Christian, and the 9 months afterwards! I read through it from time to time....

*** One Hour Later ***

...I found my old journals and started reading. LoL. I got them mainly because I suddenly got the urge to read them after talking about them. The thing that's really cool is that the last line of it talks about God:

Wednesday December 9 - 23:39
"Anyway, I love God, and he’ll help me through it, and for that I am very grateful. I must sleep now."

And that's it! I'm not trying to sound big-headed, but I thought that was soo cool! I used to have a laptop, and used to sit in bed writing my journal. It died at that point and it's still not fixed. I managed to extract my journals from the hard drive a while after that, and was really surprised the first time I read that line. Because it was private (and password protected), there's a lot of deep, inside stuff in there that covers about 3/4 of my time at 6th form. During that time I was non-Christian, paranoid, suffering from depression and worked my way through to believing in God and stuff. I didn't realise that when I first told my best mate at the time that I was Christian, I told him he'd be going to Hell...

April '98
"..I told him that I had given my heart to God on Sunday. I said that I believe that, because he doesn’t believe in Jesus, that he will go to hell, and I don’t want him to go to hell, I want him to come to heaven with me. I think that I was a tad strong.."

LoL - how much of an understatement is that last bit? "Tad strong"!?

And...just because I'm going to see Green Day soon, I thought I'd show you what I wrote about them last time I went to see them (in 1998)...

Sunday February 1 1998
"On Friday I went to see Green Day. It was brilliant; I got a long sleeve T-shirt for £18 and acquired a chain! I said before that I wouldn’t wear one because everyone else wore them, so I’ve decided that I’m going to wear it around my neck instead of on my jeans. I didn’t get back from Green Day until about 01:30, and didn’t get to sleep until around 2am, so I was really late for my paper rounds yesterday morning....Rich found a wallet when we went to see Green Day, and it had £20 in it. My parents overheard me saying how much I would like that money to Rich over the phone, so they might think the worst of that. We sent the wallet back to the owner complete with £20. I’m going to go to sleep now and get some rest for tomorrow’s paper round."

I'll be sure to let you know how the next Green Day gig goes. That's not 'till June though. Anyways, it's late. I must sleep now.

Listening to: nothing - it's too late and I'm too tired.

Another Personality Test

You scored as Logical/Mathematical. You like to work with numbers and ask questions. You learn best by classifying information, engaging in abstract thinking and looking for common basic principles. People like you include mathematicians, biologists, medical technicians, geologists, engineers, physicists, researchers and other scientists.

Logical/Mathematical		93%
Musical/Rhythmic		86%
Intrapersonal		86%
Verbal/Linguistic		75%
Visual/Spatial		71%
Interpersonal		71%
Bodily/Kinesthetic		57%

The Rogers Indicator of Multiple Intelligences
created with QuizFarm.com

Listening to: Oasis - "Champagne Supernova" ((What's The Story) Morning Glory?)

Two hunters walk into the woods...

A couple of absent minded hunters are out in the woods when one of them falls to the ground. He doesn't seem to be breathing. His eyes are rolled back in his head. The other guy whips out his mobile phone and callls the emergency services. He gasps to the operator: "My friend is dead! What can I do?" The operator, in a calm soothing voice says, "Just take it easy. First, let's make sure he's dead." There's silence, then a shot is heard. The guy's voice comes back on the line. He says, "Okay, now what?"

Listening to: Aerosmith - "Deuces Are Wild" (Big Ones)

The Paradox of Our Time

I got this in a chain mail claiming to be written by cynical comedian George Carlin, but found out that it was written by Dr. Moorehead (minister, author, and former pastor of Overlake Christian Church in Redmond, Washington). Thought it was kinda cool anyways, so decided to share with you all :)

The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings butshorter tempers, wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints. We spend more,but have less; we buy more, but enjoy less. We have bigger houses andsmaller families, more conveniences, but less time. We have more degreesbut less sense, more knowledge, but less judgment, more experts, yet moreproblems, more medicine, but less wellness.
We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little,drive too fast, get too angry, stay up too late, get up too tired, read toolittle, watch TV too much, and pray too seldom. We have multiplied ourpossessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, andhate too often.

We've learned how to make a living, but not a life. We've added years tolife not life to years. We've been all the way to the moon and back, buthave trouble crossing the street to meet a new neighbor. We conquered outerspace but not inner space.

We've done larger things, but not better things. We've cleaned up the air,but polluted the soul. We've conquered the atom, but not our prejudice.

We write more, but learn less. We plan more, but accomplish less.

We've learned to rush, but not to wait. We build more computers to holdmore information, to produce more copies than ever, but we communicate lessand less.

These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion, big men and smallcharacter, steep profits and shallow relationships. These are the days oftwo incomes but more divorce, fancier houses, but broken homes.

These are days of quick trips, disposable diapers, throwaway morality, onenight stands, overweight bodies, and pills that do everything from cheer,to quiet, to kill.

It is a time when there is much in the showroom window and nothing in thestockroom. A time when technology can bring this letter to you, and a timewhen you can choose either to share this insight, or to just hit delete.

Remember; spend some time with your loved ones, because they are not goingto be around forever. Remember, say a kind word to someone who looks up toyou in awe, because that little person soon will grow up and leave yourside.

Remember to give a warm hug to the one next to you because that is the onlytreasure you can give with your heart and it doesn't cost a cent. Remember,to say, "I love you" to your partner and your loved ones, but most of allmean it. A kiss and an embrace will mend hurt when it comes from deepinside of you. Remember to hold hands and cherish the moment for somedaythat person will not be there again. Give time to love, give time to speakand give time to share the precious thoughts in your mind.

Listening to: Presidents of the United States of America - "Peaches" (Presidents of the United States of America) [How cool was this album?!? I remember listening to it when I was on my Year 10 work experience week - I was 15! Eep, that was almost 9 years ago....I must be getting old :-S ]

Weary Weekend

Wow, what a completely shattering weekend! Lets start at the beginning shall we?

Friday Night (youth club): In all essence, the evening went really well. We tried out the new age-split thing and it was great! The thing I love about youth work is just chatting to the young people and stuff like that. Sometimes I worry that I can relate to young people easier than I can to adults...and in a way it's true! I used to be so shy at talking to new people and absolutely hated it. When I started being a youth leader it was purely cuz that's what God said to do and not because I had any gifting for it; on the contrary, all the youth really intimidated me! They were exactly the kind of kids that intimidated me at school and gave me a hard time. So I threw myself into youth work, and after about three-four years, it was like some kind of barrier got broken! I was able to relate to some youth and talk to them and stuff! It was soo cool! Now (sad though it may seem), Friday nights are one of the highlights of my week! Anyways, because I worked so hard on being able to chat to young people (I still have loads to learn..), I guess I kindof neglected the "chatting to random adults" skill, LoL. I'm kindof exagerating (sp?) but I think you get the point. Anyways, Friday was great because the split meant that we had less people in there at a time. Less "crowd control" and more relationship building. I might even remember some new names (I'm rubbish at remembering names).

After youth a bunch of us went to pizza hut, where Tom claimed to have a Roswell Alien in his pizza in order to get a free one (Tom jokingly asked for a free pizza, and the waiter asked if he had any "alien" objects in the pizza we'd just eaten. That was a very, VERY silly thing to ask Tom, and the waiter fully deserved the silly answer that Tom gave him!). Got home around 12:45, and got to sleep around 1:30 which was really stupid. Why stupid? Because I had to be up at 6:45 to go into work and check that the system was up (it had been playing up all week) for the users that work weekends down in Plymouth. WHY!? Why do they do it!? Anyways, system was down, so it was good that I went in and spent an hour of my time making it work. After that went to town with my bro, "O", for a bacon buttie down by the docks (or a sausage&egg buttie in my case). Home by 10am which meant that we watched a Ricky Gervais DVD. Very bad (from a Christian POV), but oh so funny! I laughed until I couldn't breathe. Then went down town with my fave "Li'l Sis" and bought.....a card! She bought some other stuff, and we ended up going in a variety of shops and chatting to her mates. We went into co-op where her b/f was on his first day of work on the tills and the look on his face when he saw her next in line was priceless! Anyways, by that point I was soooo tired, so I managed to get home by 4pm and grab some Zees before going out for a 21st birthday party at some social club in the middle of nowhere.

The Party
When I got to the party, I felt really mentally drained. Didn't feel like making any effort with people that I didn't know that well. I know it's really bad, but I really couldn't be bothered to make small talk - it was all because I hadn't had much sleep the night before, and I got an early start. So much for catching up on sleep that afternoon! So I just sat down all night and stayed with my friends. Friends are good - you can just chat rubbish and be yourself without making any effort. Especially youth - being young was so un-complicated. I'm glad I'm older now though - the benefits are far better *grin*. Anyways, I sat around the edge of the "dance area" all evening without the energy to get up and dance....that was probably my downfall. Far too much time to watch couples dancing, and, as I'm sure many of you have experienced before, I got the slow-dance-blues towards the end. That part of the evening where all the couples get up and slow dance and you have to sit there and watch them and wonder why it never seems to be you up there (side note: have you ever noticed that there's always the the 2 girls dancing with each other who don't seem to care that they're single...along with the obligitory lads who are messing around trying to grab their attention?). Anyways, by the end of the evening I was helping "Harriet" pack away PA stuff while feeling tired, fed up and surprisingly single. Now don't get me wrong, I'm enjoying being single while I can; there's so much you can't do when you're in a relationship. But now and then I get a stark reminder of my (seemingly) long-term singleness and distinct lack of female companionship. But it has now passed - I had God and church on Sunday to help me with that!

I love to worship God. I mean, He's so amazing. If nothing good ever happened again in my lifetime, He's still be worthy to be praised because of the fact that I've got forever with Him! I mean what's 70 years compared with Eternity!??!?!? My life will seem like a tiny blur in a million years time when I'll still be up in heaven...hopefully with a lot of you lot!! I think that's one of my favourite things about God. No matter what's happening in my life, I know it's just temporary and that eventually I'll be in the best place of all. Sunday was great because we had some really great times of worship and "Harriet"'s preaching was really cool. In the avo we had our monthly "youth sunday lunch" around at Rita's place. It was soooooo good. I love going to Rita's - God is gonna bless her so much when we're all in heaven. The evening had some good preaching too, and worship was pretty cool too.

We went round to Loz's after church and chilled out for a bit. Watched the stupid final of stupid Big Brother. It clicked with me the other day what it is that appeals to people about Big Brother: it's the ultimate form of gossip! I mean, what is gossip? Sticking your nose into other people's lives and figuring out what's best for them and how to fix their faults. Big Brother is a televisation of people's lives, and then televised gossip about them, which everyone (and yes, I have been guilty of this in the past) joins in with. Hmm, the devil can be subtle, no? Justified gossip in the name of entertainment. Anyways, LoL, chilled at Loz's for a bit and went back home early to get an early night. Ended up going to bed just as late as normal, only managed to chat to my bro and mum a bit - bonus!

Work happened today. System is still down in the mornings when I get in..hopefully figure out what's wrong with it tomorrow as we've made the error-tracking-log go into "lets-log-everything-that-happens-on-the-system" mode. This means that it creates a HUGE logfile in just a few minutes which we'll trawl through tomorrow, looking for the reason that the system dies every morning.

When I got home from work I just slept a bit and then got up to go to worship practice, where we learned a new song.

I listened to Joss Stone all day today and found some Joss Stone wallpaper. Hmm, it's weird, I think this is possible the first time I've put a pic up of a celebrity as my background for about 10 years! Maybe I'm backsliding...LoL. I have the same pic as a background on my phone too :-P

Listening to: the hum of my laptop fan and tapping of my typing

Needle Death

Afternoon all. It is my (almost) traditional Friday afternoon update! Ahh, where do I begin? Do I start with the food I ate last night, or the time I went to sleep? It's too hard to choose - the excitingness of it all *end sarcasm*

Ahem - aaaaanyways...this week has been pretty good! I've spent most of my time at work trying to get stuff working on a new server. It appears my user account on my laptop has something wrong with it and I can't do what I need to do. Ah well. Only took me a week to figure it out, LoL. No, seriously, it's been kinda fun and challenging.

What else have I done? Tuesday I took a some of the youth to see "Million Dollar Baby"; it's about a boxing trainer (Clint Eastwood) taking on and training a female boxer. Was surprisingly good! Directing was pretty cool, and it wasn't much like Rocky at all - more of a drama than a sport-feel-good-typical-film type thing. I enjoyed it anyways. Oh yeah, and at work that day the power went to one of the server racks and our live system was down for a while. You gotta laugh when stuff like that happens - otherwise life gets far too stressful over stuff you have no control over!

On Wednesday I was meant to meet up with a mate and go see "Without a Paddle", but they cancelled on me. So I just stayed in and re-watched "Donnie Darko". Dark, dark film, but kinda interesting! I think it's even starting to make (some) sense now!

That brings me to last night. I was meant to go see 'Alice' at the Old Vic with Nath. However the guy that was meant to book the tickets for us kinda hadn't, and when Nathan tried phoning up, they were sold out (I think). Plus I think I already saw it a couple of years back with Youth (we thought we were taking them to a pantomime, but it was a play...whoops!). So I just went 'round his and we watched a couple of Eddie Izzard DVDs while I did some stuff to a laptop and PC that belong to some other friends of mine - LoL. Was just updating them with the latest service packs and stuff if you're really interested...otherwise just don't read this sentence.

Phew, ok. That leaves me with today. Today I'm at work and found out that I passed last week's (semi-)pointless exam with 33/40 points. Yay! I won't have to retake/think about it again! [I'm sure that's not the point of the exam Tristan]

*looks round* Who's that?
[You've forgotten me already?]
Uhhhh....
[I am MEEEE. Yaaaaaaaa]
Oooookay. Why are you on my blog?
[Because I am you, and you are me. Which means.....I am MEEEEE. Yaaaaaaaa]
Getting a little confused here
[I am MEEEE...]
Ohhhh. Now I understand...
[Good]
NOT.
[Well, **sniff**, if you don't appreciate me, then I'll go]
Good plan, then I won't be stuck here talking to myself in front of the whole internet.
[You could delete the internet...then they wouldn't watch you talking to yourself]
Uhhhh. Yeah...right. Are you still here
[Uhm. No?]
Good


I'm going to stop now. As you may have guessed, I'm not really thinking of much to say. If I do, you'll be the first to know. Depending on how many other people read this first.

Listening to: Something Corporate - "I Want To Save You" (Leaving Through The Window)

What Relgion Suits Me?

Not too sure about this one - there wasn't really the answers I wanted in some of the questions...I think people just make up these quizes (well duh..) Flattering result tho :-P

Take the quiz: "WHAT RELIGION BESTS SUITS YOU?"


True Christian
You are humble, gracious, kind and extremely Christ-like. You believe in the bible as your law, but read it in its original language. Perhaps you're not a scholar, but you're not an armature either. You normally don't feel church is acceptable for your form of worship, and if anyone believes different from you, you might try to learn something from them.

Reliance on Technology

I just got a sharp reminder of my reliance on technology. I went to a cash machine at ASDA (for my American readers: ASDA is owned by Wal-Mart ...it's basically a Wal Mart, but has more grocery stuff than other stuff) on my lunchbreak to get a mini-statement/cash before I bought my lunch. After waiting for about 5 minutes in the wind/rain I pulled out my wallet in front of the ATM to find that my cash card wasn't there! I assumed I'd left it on my desk at home (well, it's not a desk as such..it's the top of some drawers that I put my laptop on when I'm online), and so decided to use my credit card. As I was wondering up to the sandwich kiosk in ASDA I realised I wasn't quite sure of the PIN for my credit card. Last time I had to use my CC in ASDA was when I could still sign for stuff in there. Hmm, not good - needed lunch. After a brainwave I re-checked my wallet and discovered my cashcard buried underneath my video card, and not in the usual slot. Result! Lunch was on. Got me some breakfast bars too (and various other furniture) ...mmm...breakfast bars.

Stupid, amazing, convenient, infuriating technology.

Anybody else got any techno-horror-stories?

Listening to: Pre-recorded voice while I wait for an internal help-desk to answer the phone

Temptation; Say "NO!"

Hallo! How are you all doing in Blogland? Sorry I haven't been blogging - I really haven't been bothered 'cuz it's been quite a busy week, but I thought I'd give you a quick update.

Monday: Started the aforementioned 3-day training course for something called ITIL ("IT Infrastructure Library" - yeah, yeah...makes no sense to me either). It was kinda useful, but I'm not really into managment speak, so it was quite brain intensive to keep translating everything the bloke said into english, and then somehow store the results in such a way to pass the exam. *shudder*

I think I've already mentioned what happened that evening, so I'll stop here with Monday. Did I mention I went for a run? Probably not. Well I did, and my knee started to twinge again...grrr!

Tuesday: Day two of the training course - fun. After work I went up to church to practice piano before my lesson, but the lesson was cancelled. I praticed anyway and pretty much finished my last Grade 1 piece! Yay! Hopefully should start on the Grade 2 book this week! Then I stayed in for the evening to think up/prepare for a youth discussion and revise for my "ITIL" exam. I think I also managed to finish my book. I been bad...I finally started the 2nd book in the "Quicksilver" series by Neal Stephenson, but made the mistake of going into a bookshop and bought two more books. I have since read those two books and left the N.Stephenson book on page 60. Anyways, I am now back on that book...must not go into bookshops when I have a book already!

Wednesday: Took the ITIL exam. I passed two mock exams with flying colours, so I'm pretty confident that I passed this one. Should find out this week sometime.

In the evening was the youth discussion group. Since it was the first one back (and cuz I didn't have Nigel for backup) I decided on a nice easy topic of "lying", and also a bit of a debate on video/music/software piracy. I think it went OK, but could have been better :-S spent too long on the games. On the plus side, the youth managed to chat a lot about the various things, wheras normally they're next to silent (except for Simon...you can't shut him up!).

Thursday: Back into the workplace environment and a pile of stuff to catch up on. Stopped by church after work to give Nigel back the church key and nicked his laptop to do something with the youth register. We've decided to split youth into two groups and have two sessions on a Friday night because there are too many kids for us to do anything but "Crowd Control" (we had 80 kids there on Friday!):

• 6:30pm - 8:30pm : Year 6 - Year 8
• 8:30pm - 10:30pm : Year 9 - Year 11

We'll be starting the system this coming Friday. Anyways, I was meant to be going out, but it got cancelled, so I stayed in watching TV while doing a much better register system in Access (it was previously just a spreadsheet). Ended up staying up until 1am!! Time flies when you're having fun!

Friday
Yeay! Last day of work! Youth in the evening too! We tried a new system of allocating people to 'areas' of the hall. LoL - I ended up at the top which I wasn't meant to be, but managed to chat to loads of youth, so I had a good night! Afterwards we just chilled out for a bit and chatted. I was on the door for the first half with my new register. It was *much* faster than a spreadsheet! I'm not bigging myself up, but it was sooo much easier to use :-D

Saturday
Somehow I got pursuaded to play football because our team were a few players short. So I was up at 08:30 (it's not natural I tell ya!) and drove to wherever it was to play. Managed to get on as a right-back during the second half, and it was kinda fun :), even if we did lose 2-1 (we should have won..we played much better overall...grr). Then in the afternoon I just kinda slept and watched Mission Impossible 2. In the evening a bunch of us went to Bath to see "The Band With No Name" - the lead guy in it is a cousin/nephew to a family in our church, so I'd heard of them a while back. I'm not really into that kind of music, so I wasn't really expecting much (espeically as I'd heard from a couple of people that they weren't very good live). The support band was OK, but weren't a very good "live act". Didn't really get the crowd going at all and you couldn't understand most of the words of the songs...even the youth said that they didn't have a clue what they were saying, however they were alright because they did have this one rather nice lass singing for them ;-) When "The Band With No Name" came on, they were actually not too bad - I quite enjoyed it. They really got the crowd going and even some of the more apprehensive youth seemed to have fun. I feel at this point that I should mention that there have (apparently) been some changes to the band line-up. There was a new guy in an orange shirt (he's married Loz...hands off ;-)) who was absolutely nutty - he was very funny, and the dancers were pretty good - loads of energy. Then went home & slept.

Sunday
Church as normal - the morning was pretty good. Mark was leading and he decided that we should sing the chorus of "Shackles" by Mary Mary at one point. It was really cool! Especially as it was only 3 chords which I could blagg on the bass quite easily ;)
The afternoon was spent watching Series 2 of "The Office" - classic! I watched Series 1 last week, and the Christmas Specials before that, so I thought I'd complete the experience.
In the evening we had a guy from the far east preaching called "Joe Remiah" (sp?). He's preached before at our church and was quite funny, easy to understand and also made some good points.
We went to Adam's for a bit after church and I ate chips from the my favourite chinese chip shop by church. Mmmm, chips ("french fries" to my American readers).

Now I'm at work listening to Delirious.

Listening to: Delirious - "I'm Not Ashamed" (D:tour 1997 Live)

Loser Score

...and apparently I'm not a loser!

In the words of Tom - "That's Debatable"




Hmm...I wonder who administers these tests. Anyways, break over!

Listening to: Offspring - "Smash" (Smash)

How Weird Am I?

Not that I needed a test to tell me this, but I'm weirder than 75% of people. That still means that there are a lot people weirder than me! How that translates into 110 I don't know.

My Nerd Score

Found a quiz, took it, now displaying it...



Apparently that means I'm nerdier than only 23% of people...I'm almost disappointed...I thought I was nerdier than that!

Brain Drain

I'm in a training course at work today. It lasts until Wednesday and my brain is fried already! It's all about something or other, and I've been bombarded with management speak and innumerable acronyms all day. They're setting us 'homework' too. I'm on a 10 minute break at the moment with nothing to do, so thought I'd just blog a bit.

Weekend was alright; had a website meeting, went to see "Alexander" (not too bad - not as good as "Troy", which in turn wasn't as good as "Gladiator"). Church was pretty cool. In the evening God just wanted to move, so we had a v.short preaching bit and it was mostly ministry and worship. I got lots of oppurtunity to try out some new bass stuff that "Harriet" showed me the other day, and some stuff that I learned from the vid (funnily enough, they both overlapped a little bit!). Afterwards we just stayed behind at church and chatted until about 11pm.

Also, my step-dad went off to start his new job in Cambridge yesterday, so got home and chatted to mum for a bit.

Gotta head back to training now :-(

Listening to: Buzzing in my head from management speak

Nice to Meet You

Well, I'm on my third day of work since Christmas, and that means that all trace of holiday has left my body. I got used to staying up late in the holiday, which now means I can't get to sleep before 1:30am. That's a bad thing when I set my alarm for 6:30am every day for work. Throw into the mix that everyone is deciding that we need meetings and I'm knackered already! Had a worship team meeting last night to discuss the 1-1s we did at the end of Equippers in October. Tomorrow night we've cancelled youth club so that we can have a youth leaders' meeting, and on Saturday there's a church website meeting to attend...granted that's at 3pm and should only last about an hour.

Tonight could go either way. I'm going to shower and sleep for a bit when I get home. Then I may or may not give Dan a bass lesson at 6 (I'm waiting for him to text me back). Straight after alleged bass lesson I'm going around to a friend's house to look at a couple of their computers to see what's wrong with them. If that doesn't take too long then I'm gonna go to a pub quiz with work which starts at 8:30pm. Phew. If one thing takes too long, or isn't long enough, then it could be a relaxing evening *grin*.

Hmm, anything interesting happened? Well, I've added yet another blog to my favourites list which brings my blog-check-favourites-folder up to a blog-count of 9. 8 if you don't count Tom's because Tom never updates it!!!!! Hint Hint Tom. Is that a form of stealing? Always reading other people's blogs and yet never blogging? I dunno, probably....Tom.

Piano lesson went quite well on Tuesday. "Harriet" is going to get me a Grade 2 book this week so that we can make a start on it, and he gave me some rock-hard stuff to practice...always good. Oh yeah! Almost forgot...I ordered a pair of bass lesson videos from 'Arrowhead Ministries' in Australia which arrived over Christmas and I watched them last night. They're quite cool, and have given me lots to practice. Not that I have time to practice piano, let alone bass cuz I don't have a bass at home (I've lent it to Dan while he starts learning).

I finished my 'Code' book, and have discovered that the encryption used for online shopping is much more secure than I thought! I mean, I thought it was pretty secure, but it's even more secure than that. I don't think that last sentence made any sense, so just ignore it if you don't get it. Suffice to say that the actual sending of details across the 'net isn't at all likely to reveal details to hackers. Storing credit card details on your HDD and not having a firewall/antivirus thing is *much* more of a risk. Ahem...yes, yes, I'm sad.

Nothing much else to report really. My step-dad starts his job in Cambridge on monday, so he won't be around as much any more :( I spent most of yesterday researching/programming this really cool thing that could keep track of file changes on our servers to be told that we can't afford any time/resource to do it. Noré from work (pronounced "Nor-eh"; like "Norway" but without the 'w') and myself had just spent a couple of hours bashing out a design around a table, and he asked what that meant. I told him that it meant we had just wasted the last few hours. Ben looked on the bright side and said "No, it means you've got a head-start when we do decide we need it!", which is a much better way of looking at it.

Nice to See You, To See You - Nice!
Nice (pronounced "Niece" / "Neess") - that's where I'm going over Easter! Yay! As soon as Luke confirms the flight details I'm gonna book my flights tonight. People going are Nige, Es, Luke, Adam, Maz, Nathan (J) and me! Can't wait..it's gonna be cool. Now all I need to do is remember some French from my school days. I know, I know, 8 years is a long time, but it seemed to (partially) come back to me when I was in skiing in Tignes last Easter. Hmm.

Well, I'd better do some work now - break over.

Listening to: Sheryl Crow - "The Book" (Sheryl Crow)

Windows Shell Extensions in .NET

If anybody is available to answer questions on this then please let me know. I think I get it, but hey...I've never done it before. I'm just gonna copy-and-paste it and see what happens...mwaaa ha ha haaaa. I didn't value my laptop anyways.

Oh and if you could create a time-stopper-still machine that would be great - then I could do enough piano practice before my lesson tonight and finish my Grade 1 pieces. Aaaargh..all that time wasted over Christmas seems so....wasted!

Listening to: Level 42 - "Hot Water" (The Collection [Best of Album])

2005 - What's In Store

Right then. I *could* fill you in on what I've been doing the past few days, but it's just more of the same really. Just chilling with friends, having a laugh, and generally enjoying not having to work. So there we go. You're updated.

Disclaimer: What follows is quite deep - I apologise in advance for those of you who aren't quite used to this from me, but Loz's latest entry really got me thinking.

Much more interesting (to me) is looking ahead to the next year. This is going to be a massive year of change for my family. My step-dad is just about to start a job in Cambridge. This means that he's going to be in Cambridge quite a lot, and in the summer, my mum's going to move out there too. Which for me means that I'm going to either move to Cambridge (not likely), or move out into the big wide world on my own. I'm 24, so really, I should move out. Scary. Really scary. Also my brother is (99% certain) going to join the RAF as a pilot. For those International visitors, you may have figured out that RAF = Royal Air Force: The Military. Now I'm not against the military; we wouldn't have the relative security we have without them. But I don't want my brother to get hurt in some stupid war that's really none of our business in the first place. Rant over.

And in all of this I need to find out what God wants. I mean, what's to stop me moving to the USA and just forgetting Bristol. I could move up to Scotland and spend time with The Scots (as we call them...too many of them to call names, and there are so many more of them than just the Galloways). I could move to Cardiff and help on the church plant that our church is doing this year. I could move to London - heck man...I could move anywhere! I could become a skiing instructor and spend all of next winter on the slopes!! In fact, if I got a closer job, I could get rid of my car and pay off all my debts this year before winter, and then be a ski bum with Oak Hall for a few months. Hmm, worth thinking about. Apparently there's a high chance of meeting your future spouse on Oakhall, so maybe I should definitely consider it.

Last Year
Last year was pretty good. I worked a lot, took on more responsibility at church, made a start at learning piano (starting Grade 2 soon), improved my bass playing (in my humble opinion), went to New York for the first time (that I can remember - apparently I lived there from 0-2 years old...but I don't have any recollection of it). I feel like I've got a bit more confidence and I'm closer to some of my friends. I feel like I'm closer to my parents and my brother especially and I'm a step closer to accepting that maybe I'm valuable for who I am and not just what I do for people, and that some people might actually like me for me and not my car or technical abilities.

I haven't progressed at work as much as I'd have liked, and have discovered a few things about the world of work that make me slightly more negative about it. I *have* shared the gospel with a few people at work, but haven't really done it as much as maybe I should have. I've made a moral stand against all of the pirated DVDs that get distributed at work (by having no part of it) and I'm pretty sure that I'm a step closer to finding whatever it is that God wants me to do in my life. I've had more downs than ups with God this year, but think I'm getting a bit closer overall to understanding a bit more about Him.

Yeah, I think that overall this past year has been a good one, just gently plodding along, but the next one is going to be much more interesting and exciting.

BRING IT ON!!

Listening to: the whirr of the fan in my laptop