Such wonders

Golly. If you look hard enough you can find beauty in almost any environment!

I had sneezed on my monitor about – ooooh – an hour ago. The effect, as the liberally scattered bodily fluids have crystallised, is an amazing rainbow of coloured specs that seem to pick up the colours from my screen. Tilt my head a little and the colours dance and play and hypnotise. Freaky.

Can’t wait til I get a summer cold. If that was the effect from a lil’ sneeze, just imagine the effect when I get the ebola virus and heave a man-sized man-flu explosion at the screen!

My name is not Earl, but I do know that office life is the Karmic balance readjusting itself from all the fun in my previous lives.

What the Flip?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4648598.stm

Over 2,000 participants took part in the survey, and were asked what best described their view of the origin and development of life:

48% selected evolution theory
22% chose creationism
17% opted for intelligent design
13% did not know.

In my book that makes over half the population as idiots?? Do that many people still believe in God?

Aw well, what are you going to do?

The Weekend that was

Far to short a weekend, when is that 4 day working week going to start, that they were all going on about in the 70’s or so.

Anyway, I have a serious case of Xbox thumb, from playing too much over the weekend. Not bad enough to take the day off, but close. I also watched a couple of Rugby games as well just to give the thumb a rest. Although Halo at 1.30am after two bottles of wine, is a blast.

Sunday early evening saw the first Annual Hall Chinese New Years Party, which was a roaring success. As yet there have been no confirmed reports of illness after trying Ady’s, “Chicken Soup Surprise”, obviously the surprise was it wasn’t the least bit palatable. But having tried Ady’s fried egg and chocolate pizza, that wasn’t much of a surprise.

There were a lot of people, and lots of snacks and drinks. Everyone looked to be having a great time, and I only hope Paulie B, doing his first ever designated driver rota, managed to pull his wife away from the Margarita’s before she got too comfy on the couch.

Cheers to Hall & his Bev, for a great day. Although next year, Nemo asked can you invite some more chicks his age.

TV - American Style

Just watched "28 Days Later". Very good. Jolly well should be as it is made in Grand Britain.

However, I'm not sure what it's running time was in good old GB. But here, it took 3 hours. For example, there were 4 ad breaks in the last 30 minutes. Each break is 4 minutes long. Somewhat kills the suspense.

They show no adverts in the first 20 minutes of these epics and then increase their occurence as the audience is hooked.

Did you know that a standard primetime show (like frasier or king of queens) takes the following form:

Intro (which follows immediately on from previous show)
Break
Opening Credits
Break
5 mins of show
Break
5 mins of show
Break
Final witty one liner + Credits
which then roll into the next show.

They don't put breaks between shows. As people are more likely to get up and do something less boring instead.

One of the more bizarre things is that they run the trailer for the show your watching in the break in the show you're watching.

They do entire 1 hour episodes that 'bring you up to speed' on the series so far.

Some films are so long they're split them over two nights. Like a truly epic movie such as.....Harry Potter (admit it, you were expecting me to say LOTR)

If I ever hear anyone whinge about their TV licence I'll pee on them.

Shoot me.

For want of something better to post

For those of us who do not really understand what is going on in the world ....here are some unpublished letters to the editor:

The government tells us that we are eating too many pies and dying of heart disease, then in the next breath they're telling us we are living too long and there'll be no more pension money left for us. I wish they'd make their minds up.
John

Alton Towers - Where the magic never ends', or so the commercial says. Imagine my disappointment when it closed at 7.30.
Colum Hill

I was shocked to hear Home Secretary David Blunkett say that Britain's prison population has been ballooning for the past ten years. My God, has the world gone mad? Those people are there to be punished, not to be given 'thrill of a lifetime' experiences that most law abiding citizens can only dream of.
Mrs Close

Hats off to the England cricketers for their achievements in the Ashes this summer, which rightly earned Andrew 'Freddie' Flintoff the BBC Sports personality of the Year. Winning a two-team tournament against a nation with a much smaller population once in every ten attempts, then never shutting up about it makes me proud to be British.
Ben Hunt

I am married to a Taiwanese lady, and people often ask me if she was a mail-order bride. I find this very insensitive. The Royal Mail lose around 2 million letters and parcels each year, and to suggest that I would trust the delivery of my wife to them is insulting in the extreme. She was sent by DHL next day delivery.
L Palmer, London

The record companies would have us believe that the money made by CD pirates goes to fund the drug industry. But the money rock stars make from legal record sales ends up in exactly the same place. When they stop breaking the law, so will I.
P Boddington, Ringway

Did anyone else feel that Mel Gibson's remake of the classic Life of Brian wasn't anywhere near as funny as the original?
P, Leeds

Health Warning

SuDoku challenge’s can cause severe neck injuries… I was sat on the “throne” this morning for a good 30 mins, head bent doing the SuDoku quiz on my knee. When I finally got up, I had such a pain in my neck.

It is still hurting me now, and limited severely what I was able to do in the Gym.

I have a good mind to sue somebody…

No Homer’s Almost 40 Club

A couple of the lads came round last night to talk world domination, which also included our Canadian “No Homer’s Almost 40” member who joined us via telephone conference. We did a bit on the computer and then played various Xbox 360 games. Mostly we sat in awe at Paulie B’s dexterous thumbs and wondered where our youth and reflexes went…. I hate young people…

Today is Thursday as most of you would have already guessed, and my working week seems to entail no pretense of actual work at all. It is spent purely doing boring me stuff. I drink copious amounts of tea, to give me something to do; I read and re-read various blogs and website’s over and over again. I print off and do the daily SuDoku challenge (yesterdays one was classed as VERY HARD, which I finished) whilst sat on the toilet for 30 mins at a time. I talk to anyone I can on MSN, that forgets to set their status to “appear off-line”, fools! I wander around and talk to people as they work; I pick up various newspapers and glance over the same shitte I read on the internet. I tread water basically till my Alarm goes, and then I fuck off home and enjoy my life, till I have to start the same Ground Hog Day over and over again….

Still it's the weekend soon.

Whale News

Personal Shit

I try not to mention anything personal about my family on here, as it usually get’s me neck deep in ca ca.

However, my unbelievably sexy wife cooked me a fantastically romantic meal last night, and then we settled down to watch Boston Legal.

It was a great night, except for too much Red Wine.

I must also add that Boston Legal just get’s funnier and funnier, Capt Kirk & Dr Daniel Jackson are hil-fucking-larious.

Thank you wife.

Note to Self

On a school night ONE bottle of wine is sufficient, if I feel like opening a second, just shoot me.

That is all.

Made me Laugh

Here is a review of one of the Restaurants’ on the Isle of Man. They do also mention comments about the whole feel of the Island.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2104-1984163,00.html

Read and enjoy and then remember it’s nothing like that; it’s worse.

DIY; I Rock!

I’ve had a DIY project that has been screaming at me to do it. Actually it was more the wife screaming at me to do it, never-the-less somebody was screaming and it wasn’t me.

Basically to give you some background story.

In our fitted kitchen, going from the wall outwards was: slim Fridge Freezer, Chest Freezer (top opening) and then fitted work top.

The trouble started when we bought a Huge Fridge Freezer, that whilst brilliant, is a fair bit wider that the old one. So we could “just” about fit it in, but now you can’t open the lid of the chest freezer because of the over hand of the work top. To get in you have to pull the freezer out get your stuff and then squeeze it back in.

All it needed was to take the work top off and cut 25mm off the end; but when you don’t know the first thing about stuff like that, it looks a big job.

Anyhoo, I thought what the hell I’d have ago last Saturday. After unscrewing three poxy screws the work top came off. Measured 25mm line on the bottom of the work top and then got the next door neighbour to come round with his circular saw and lop off the end. Wacked it back on top of the cupboards and re-screwed the three screws. JOB DONE.

All that time putting it off and off thinking what a HUGE job it would be, and it took about 15 mins… Bastard DIY…

Bugger!

I promised the wife I wouldn’t spend any more money, after having gone a little mad on Electronics since Christmas (HD TV, HD DVD, Xbox 360), but there is a new game out on Friday for the 360 that we really need to buy.

When you own a games console you need (are almost required by law) to purchase at least one game from all genres. We have a racing game (PGR3), Tomb Raider will be our adventure game, Halo is acting as our FPS (first person shooter) until a respectable 360 specific game is released, so what we are missing is a fighting game.

These are great to pick up and kick some arse for 10 mins and then put down, especially when you get back from the pub.

We do have an excellent fighting game, Mortal Kombat, but it won’t work on the new 360 as they haven’t released a software emulator to get it working. So there lays the problem, how do I purchase Dead or Alive 4 on Friday?

Options I have so far:

Buy it and say, “No honey it’s not new, I’ve had it hanging in the wardrobe for years”
Buy it as an early Birthday present for one of children (11th March is the next one)
Buy it and say I’ve borrowed it of Paulie B.
Buy it and only play it when no one is around.
Exchange some of the games that we don’t use (Doom 3, King Kong) and get money off Dead or Alive4, (technically this is still buying it)

Or the wife’s favourite, don’t buy it; “We can’t afford to splash out £45 quid on a game we don’t need, when we can’t afford to live on what we have as it is.” But that’s just crazy drunk talk, bitch.

If any one has suggestions or ideas, or spare cash?

Back On The Road

Yep, after a gap of more than four years i'm legally allowed back on the roads with my full on driving license. Remember kids, drinking and driving is not clever, fines can be paid but the embarassment of having to go through your driving test again as 1. an adult and 2. a convicted drink driver just isn't worth it.

PS The ebayer was me not Kingster, I can't post from work and I needed that rant broadcast asap. Bastard eBay and their fookin rip off bastard scammers, it's ok i've calmed down now.

EBay - Seller Beware

So I’ve been using eBay to buy stuff for about 4 years.  I'm not a frequent user and normally only buy the odd techy thing that has either been discontinued or I can't find locally.  In those 4 years I have never had any problems at all, good sellers with great communication, posting on time, well packed etc etc.  I've always paid instantly and it has been as straight forward as any online shopping I’ve ever done.

This week I went to sell my first item on eBay.  Thanks to a little bit of over enthusiasm on my part I ended up with 2 brand new x-box 360s.  All I wanted was to get my money back on 1 of them so I figured sell it quickly on eBay at a bargain price (they are still going for around the £400 mark) and everyone’s happy...or not as the case may be.  First of all eBay’s seller charges are high, can't remember of the top of my head how high but I was looking at £10 for a very basic 1 picture listing BEFORE anything was sold or any payment fees etc are taken.  Never mind eh, as long I could get my money back I’d be happy?  I did a three day listing and set the "buy it now" price of only £360 with a £300 reserve.  I specified only UK bidders and payment only by paypal or a personal cheque.  How could I fail?  After 2 days and a few bids someone finally decided to buy it outright at £360.  Great, I was chuffed.

I then got an e-mail from the buyer that went along the lines of "Hello, I’m a Nigerian scammer and I want you to post your item to Nigeria via UPS.  It will cost you lots of money to do this.  I will send you cash in the post.  Oh yeah I’ll need your full name, address and bank details as well."  Is anybody elses alarm bells ringing here?  I politely sent a message back telling them to f**k off.  Wound up I thought I’d search the web for any info and as it turns out this is a very common scam, in fact stuff the web, of the 3 real life in the real world people I know who have tried to sell an electrical item on e-bay all have had the same.  They have all tried re-listing (more eBay fees) but have eventually given up, some £50 down with nothing to show for it.  The great thing in all this is that as soon as your item is sold, eBay charge you a final amount fee as well. EBay are well aware of this scam, but have never done anything to help protect the people paying their fees.  

All in all I’m looking at a minimum of £30 worth of fees to sell my item (not including any paypal charges) and that’s if it is sold to a genuine buyer the second time around.  On average it appears to take 3-4 times until something is sold to a genuine buyer.  I wouldn't mind if eBay refunded some of the charges but they do sweet FA.  You can raise a dispute with the buyer at which point you "may" get your final fee back depending on what the buyer says, but if you want to sell something you've just gotta keep on listing and keep on paying those fees!

How hard would it be for eBay to add some sort of buyer address authentication to people bidding over a certain amount?  Considering they and paypal are one and the same I doubt it would even take a week to implement? Also, seeing as how they know all about this stuff why not stop people registering an account and bidding on high value stuff when they have no feedback? Will they though, I doubt it.

So that's it then, for as long as there is a hole in my ass I will never use e-bay again, to buy or sell.  They are charging rip-off amounts of money and offering nothing in return.  I decided to sell my x-box the old fashioned way, asked around the office and found a cash buyer no probs.  E-bay are nothing less than complete and utter coonts and I look forward to the day when their business falls flat on its face amongst complaints, law suits and all sorts of other shitte.

Don’t Drink and Drive!

We watched Wedding Crashes last night (a good film btw) and enjoyed a bottle of wine or two. Anyhoo, at 3.00am this morning I couldn’t sleep and so came downstairs and thought I’d play a couple of games of Project Gotham.

Well, to cut along story short, I was shitte. I could win any of the new races, and was constantly banging of the sides of the walls. I thought, “It couldn’t be all that wine I drank earlier could it?”

So I had a go on the very first novice race, which I had completed with ease when I first played. Sure enough, I was shitte on that course as well and kept finishing last…

So all the Drink Drive Campaigns are right, drinking affects your driving. Who would have thought?

Anyhoo I gave up and watched an episode of Firefly, which had me in stitches.

Have a good weekend.

Workaholics

Brummie used to rant about how Invisipoo would take advantage of him. I explained that that's what managers/management are supposed to do.

And that Brummie would always find himself in the same position as he was a workaholic.

Back to the present, it's nearly 2am and I've been going since 10am. I've worked 70+ hours in the last 7 days with more to come. But my program is nearly finished.

The irony is, I handed my notice in three months ago.

WHAT KIND OF TW*T AM I?

PGR 3 & King Kong Game Review

Project Gotham Racing 3 for the Xbox 360: The graphics are fantastic, the feel of the car is perfect and the whole thing is great. Not much of a review, but it’ll do me. I recommend this game, even if you aren’t a big racing fan like me.

King Kong for the Xbox 360: Very dark adventure game. Initially I enjoyed it, but it is very dark, and hard to see what is attacking you half the time. To make matters worse, to show you are low on health the game makers blur the screen to show you are losing consciousness, but all that means is you can’t see fuck all as the whole lighting is shitte. So once you get bitten, you are effectively dead as you haven’t a clue what’s going on…. So rent it don’t buy it.

And Finally a rant:

To play old Xbox games on the new 360, you need the hard drive, which has an emulator on it. They have a list of backward compatible games, but for some unknown and ungodly reason Mortal Kombat isn’t on it. Cooonts. I fancied a few fights on the big HD screen.

Xbox 360 is the new Video iPod

I bought an Xbox 360 the other day; by accident, however I am very impressed with the machine overall.

Apart from the Game play, which of course is down to each individual game, the machine itself is sex in a box.

When you boot her up, you get all these Blades (sections), which look cool. You can download all these free (and you can’t beat free) games, which are all highly addictive especially, Hexic and Zuma.

During any game, you can talk to your mate playing an entirely different game.

You can turn the console on and off remotely using the Wireless Controller.

But the coolest thing I found last night is the streaming media. I can wirelessly connect to my Win XP laptop from the console and access all the stored Music and Photos.

But the bestest thing ever, is when you are playing music it has one of those Visualisations like in Windows Media Player (which I guess that’s all it really is), but you can make it full screen. Plus this visualisation is on a 37” HD LCD and it looks fan-fucking-tastic…. Mind blowingly good. Hypnotic.

I can wait to have our next party in the house and have that going in the back ground.

Sky’s new EPG

Sky has updated the EPG (Electronic Programme Guide) and it’s shitte…. Just thought I would pass on my thoughts.

Cooonts