Crafty police

I wonder who left the suspicious package lying around in the first place...

http://www.northantset.co.uk/news/Mystery-package-causes-pub-scare.5511482.jp

Barmaid Samantha Cumberpatch, 30, said: "The police were here about three or four hours."They told us to keep the front door to the pub shut and to keep the windows closed.

PC Crafty McDodgy said afterwards "we didn't touch a drop"

Result

I had lunch with James today and there wasn't enough time to grab lunch on the way back to the office.

Luckily we've got a load of graduates in today and there's loads of left over sandwiches, sausage rolls and pork pies!

Result!

Plus, before knowing this I did a sneaky walk of shame and grabbed a packet of jaffa cakes and some hob nobs. That's almost a three course meal.

Bloody hell! 5 Years!

I've just noticed that i've managed to keep this spreadsheet going for over 5 years! Wow! What a loser...

Cease fire

It's been around a month since Poppet and Biscuit last brought something into the house, woo hoo! Maybe they're just eating them instead...

Shame it won't be released in time for the bbq

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8175321.stm

New Blu ray

I bought the blu ray last night and as with all new technology in my hands, it's going to take some work.

Firstly, the new HDmi cable wasn't long enough and secondly my TV only has one HDmi slot so i'm going to have to buy a splitter.

Doh!

On the plus side though, it does work, and I no longer have red tinted dvds.

Picking up the meat tonight

I'm picking up the meat for the bbq tonight. James suggested meeting me half way but he's in Essex which is the other side of the river from me so he would have to pay £3 in tolls so I said that I would do it. After all, he's doing me the favour in getting the meat in the first place. Also, exchanging meat for cash in a lay by sounds a bit dodgy to me.

We're going to have a burger off, April's making some Nigella burgers with half the mince, and James' girlfriend is making her own recipe with the other half. If there's any left over i'll make some spicy Stu special burgers. They'll be so hot you can no longer taste the cider...

Blu ray

After getting the floor done we've decided to get rid of the dvd player / amp. It's a good system but there are too many wires (that can no longer be placed under the carpet), we now use my new stereo for sound and the only way to connect it to my TV was through scart (which has some sort of problem with it, hence the red hue when playing dvds). I've seen half decent ones for £140 so I might get one next month.

But then I thought I could get a PS3 instead. Then I looked at the price and they're still pretty expensive so doubt it.

This sort of thing never happened when I was a kid

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/5932827/India-bans-school-stunts-after-motorcyclist-rides-over-pupil.html

Seagal is a retard

I watched a recorded Seagal film last night (April's upstairs so I can watch what I want). Jeez it was bad, all he seems to do is slap people really quickly. It was that bad I can't even remember what it was called. But I guess it doesn't really matter as once you've seen one Seagal film you've probably watched the lot.

Looking on IMdb, I think it was Pistol Whipped. Not sure why it was called that as I don't think I saw one instance of pistol whipping. 5.6 / 10 seems a bit high. I'll give it 48 /100

Tag Line: They came to collect a debt. He paid in full.

I also watched Underworld: Rise of the Lycans, on Monday, crap.

IMdb 6.6 / 10, SC 59 /100

Team lunch

We have a team lunch today, it was supposed to be for our new starter but seeing as she's left after half a day I thought it'd get cancelled. Luckily we're still going ahead with it (despite one team member being down with swine flu). We're off to the Leadenhall Market Loch Fyne.

April is not a happy bunny

April has swine flu so I have quarentined her in our bedroom, I managed to pick up some tamiflu from the chemist but had to wait for 45 mins as their supply had run out.

On the plus side she's feeling better today so with any luck she'll be fine by the weekend.

Alienware T minus 9 months time

Just been looking at new laptops, as you do, and have been looking at Alienware

Just spotted their latest feature

Geeky or cool?

Bring your brolly

Tonbridge is forecast for heavy rain on Saturday so don't forget your umbrellas. It won't be the first bbq i've had in the rain and it certainly won't be my last.

Dancing is dangerous

After getting forced to dance at Kris' wedding my shoes are now super slippy (again), I think the leather soles have taken on some of the polish from the dance floor. If it wasn't for my superior cat like reflexes i'd have fell over 3 times yesterday.

Flu

April's not feeling so hot today. She wasn't great on Sunday night and had to get up early to travel to Birmingham the next day didn't help. She's off today, so I have to pick up some viral stuff from a pharmacy in the city after work.

Sounds a bit odd that there's only one for the whole of the City (and by City, I don't mean London, I mean the square mile), surely if you want the country to get back on it's feet after the whole recession nonsense you need as many of these guys back on their feet so they can try and recoup their (our) losses.

No New Freezer

The guys turned up last night at around 8 and as soon as they took it out of the box it was obvious that it was damaged. Squashed on both sides so god knows what happened to it.

They boxed it up and are due to deliver another one on Wednesday. Doh!

Luckily it'll still be in time for the bbq.

Record?

We had a new starter today, she sat opposite me. When I got back from lunch she took my boss to the side and said she'd made a mistake and left the building!

Bloody hell... Is that a record? She's effectively wasted 4 months of our time. Idiot!

Harry Potter experience

I spotted a sign on the connecting road between the M25 and Tonbridge (A21) on Saturday.

THE HARRY POTTER LOOKALIKE EXPERIENCE

It starts next weekend and i'm very curious to see how much of an experience it would be. I imagine it's going to be of the same standard as the Lapland experience that was panned last Christmas.

Harry Potter: I can see it being the poor son of a farmer with a bowl cut and a lightning scar drawn on his head with a marker pen.

Hagrid: There will be a tall guy who hasn't shaved for a few days from his local pub who's dressed up in a overcoat who's meant to be Hagrid.

Malfoy: A local yob with bleached blond hair.

Dumbledore: An old tramp, with a twig

I could continue, but I won't.

http://www.thehopfarm.co.uk/events/

"Calling all Harry Potter fans! Dumbledore and Harry Potter look-a-likes will be visiting The Hop Farm on 8th and 9th August. Come dressed up in your best wizards outfit, have your photo taken with the characters or by the Weasleys' car, watch some close up magic, go on a treasure hunt and get up close and personal with an owl. If you can't make the weekend, don't worry as a Harry Potter look-a-like will be visiting from the 4th - 7th August, so come along and have your photo taken with him."

New Freezer

We went freezer shopping yesterday. I know, the life I lead and all that...

I've wanted one for a little while as despite having a large fridge which is more than enough for two people the freezer section is tiny. We cook a a fair bit of food at home and it would be nice to be able to freeze more of it so that when one of us is out the other can just heat up a nice meal without the pain of cooking. Also April takes a couple into work each week so that's a good saving too.

Anyway, we went to Curry's on Sunday and had a look around, it's amazing how much technology and gadgetry there is in fridge freezers these days. Our current fridge came with the house and has certainly seen better days but until that dies we won't be getting a new one but when we do I want one with an ice chipper. It's like a giant Mr Frosty!

He's alive...

The code is now working.

Beep, beep , beeeeeeeeppppppppp.....

New template, means lost tracking data

Boo! By changing my template I inadvertently lost he google analytics code that kept track of the number of visitor etc. to my blog. Doh!

My charts looked as if i'd just died.

Fingerprint ID

I've been doing some pretty high profile work with head office over the last couple of weeks and part of that means I have to deal with a few of our finance guys to get details about our investments etc.

One of them has two PCs, one of which has a special bloomberg keyboard with a fingerprint / password login system. How cool is that?

Sounds a bit over the top to me but I guess it's not my money that people are trading here.

New floors when we get in tonight

Last night we moved all our stuff out of the front room / hallway / downstairs toilet, with any luck everything will be sorted with our new floor by the time we get in tonight at around 6.

I haven't had a call saying that there are any problems so fingers crossed everything'll be going fine.

Get Someone To Do It For You that's my motto.

GSTDIFY

Jealous

My mate James has just bought himself a cocker spaniel puppy.

I am so jealous!

Then I looked at the finances of it all and am glad it's not me.

£500 for the puppy
£10 / day for someone to walk it whilst they're at work
Food
Toys
Bedding
Vet Bills

= £1m pounds per week.

Two and a half cats are better, for the time being...

He, he, The Results!

I sellotaped a mini mouse to the abacus and placed it on his desk.

He, he!

The price of meat

Result!

My mate James' dad is a butcher so have asked him if his dad can supply my bbq next weekend. We've got 28 people confirmed so have ordered 90 sausages and 9lb of mince. James' girlfriend will make 15 burgers, we'll make the rest. All in all it'll cost us £36! What a bargain, last year we just bought them from Sainsbury's. I think it was closer to £100.

He, he, office prankster

One of my colleague's has been complaining about the power of his PC recently. He's done a quick comparison with other technical type users and his PCs spec is far below that of everyone else. In fact it's a P4 where we're all on duel core.

It won't surprise you to hear that i've been winding him up a little. This morning I happened to mention that I was happy for him to take my spare PC, I currently use my old one which is still faster than his as a footstool. He doesn't want it though as he may as well order a new one through IT.

To top that, i've just gone on-line and bought a children's abacus, hopefully it'll arrive before he sorts things out with IT, let the amusement continue.

He, he.

You have been watching

As you probably know i'm (April too) are big fans of Charlie Brooker, his Screenwipe, Newswipe and Arsewipe, sorry, had to throw that in there, Gameswipe (later this year) are excellent programmes. If you haven't watched them then you're an idiot. He basically takes the piss out of everything wrong with the media and the world around us.

Anyway, his new show is excellent too.

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/you-have-been-watching

I'm not sure why the programme takes up the celebrity panel format, it appears to be bolted on at the side but it is still very funny.

Last weeks episode took the piss out of a hastily removed news broadcast from ITV where it compared Michael Jackson's funeral to that of Princes Diana, in a head to head playoff style. Truly unbelievable.

http://www.casttv.com/video/ttnk0j1/michael-jackson-memorial-vs-princess-diana-memorial-itn-report-video

I'm so weak

I was due to head straight back home last night but got a text from my mate James, (ex Gallagher). He was passing through the city and wanted to know if I fancied a beer.

I was planning on catching the 5:20, then heading straight out for a run, but being the weak individual that I am I buckled and went for a few beers and some wine, followed by a kebab. I probably couldn't get a more extreme alternative.

Always read the instructions

We've just had some fence panels replaced so now need to pain them. Before heading off to Kris' stag I decided to help her and start pouring the paint into the paint spraying contraption.

If i'd have bothered looking at the paint sprayer I would have noticed that it had a number of holes in it (one for the nozzle) . Before we noticed it started pouring out all over the kitchen table!!!

Doh!

We've cleaned it up now so you can hardly notice but if I have a slightly darker tan than you'd expect for a ginger it's not spray tan, it's cuprinol...

Another reason why I should not be let near DIY activities.

New flooring

We're getting the downstairs carpet replaced with new flooring (laminate) next Friday, the cats won't have anything to scratch any more. Ha, ha, suckers!

April doesn't have to worry, I won't be doing it, we're getting some real men in. Likewise with getting our fence replaced earlier in the week. Costs more, but at least it gets done properly.

The grand unveiling will be at the bbq.

Tonight Matthew, I will mostly be killing Ork

April's out tonight so i'm in with the cats. I think i'll kill some more Orks etc. on Mark of Chaos

Kris' stag

It's Kris' stag tomorrow night, I wonder what pranks I can think of to get him with.

He's already warned me not to bring a razor, but the threat of Kirsty's wrath is far worse than anything Kris could do to me.

Free for all

One of our team left last week so this week we've been divvying up all his stationary.

I found quite a nice propelling pencil so have been using that for the last few days. I've just noticed that logo on the side is upside down. Is it a special pencil for a left handed person?

I've checked all my other pens / pencils and if you hold them in your right hand any logo / writing in the correct way up.

I like the pencil but the upside down writing will annoy me till the day I die.

Ghost town

Out of a team of seven only two of us are in today.

It's going to be a long day. Luckily i'm out for lunch with Becky then out with Steve and Tunnah (flying visit from Edinburgh, I may get him to check my teeth whilst he's here) for a drink and a bite to eat later on.

Death by cooking

I bought a Wagamama cookbook last year and only ever cooked a couple of dishes from it, so I decided to cook a new dish tonight (or i'm getting April to do it for me).

Ginger Chicken Teppan

or

Ginger Chicken Udon from the menu
http://www.wagamama.com/asset/gb/files/location/menus/1209026764_WUK%20Main%20Menu%20UK%20A3.pdf

Not including the chicken, the soy sauce and a couple of other bits we already had it cost around £17 in ingredients. If we ordered two at the restaurant it would have cost us £14.90. Although I guess we can use some of that again.

Anyhoo, in chopping up the various bits and bobs I chopped my fingers twice with my new super sharp knife! Doh! Mr Wagamama said nothing about adding a dash of human blood.

We shall let you know what it was like tomorrow.

New template

What do you think???

Model runnings

I'm logged onto 7 computers and am running 7 models each running 50,000 simulations. Once saved each taking up over a gigabyte of space on our server. Imagine doing this job with just pen and paper.

One more episode of the Wire to watch

It's taken us around a year (April's fault) but we will finally watch the last episode of the Wire tonight.

Next on my TV watching agenda, the rest of the Sopranos, we're about half way.

Hand dryer news

In our toilets at work there are two hand dryers next to each other. So in order to dry my hands quicker I use both. Until recently I assumed that everyone else did this too but since I noticed one person just using the one, everyone else i've seen also only uses one.

Before anyone asks, no I haven't been stalking round men's toilets with a clip board, it's something that i've spotted and think is odd.

Tune in next week for more hand dryer news.

Sunday

Sunday was a much quieter affair, we didn't really do much during the day (I didn't, I killed orks and giant rats on a computer game, April did some studying), in the evening we went to Tonbridge castle for a Motown concert.

Very good indeed, especially as the weather was much better than forecast. The embarrassing parent dancing was good this year too. Worth the £20 ticket on it's own.

The Jackson Five tribute at the end was the funniest though. The lead singer (Michael) sounded like Mickey Mouse!

The evening ended up with a lovely fireworks display too.

Saturday

Saturday afternoon was choc-o-bloc for us, we headed into London for 11 in the morning and headed straight to a modern art museum (what fun, April's idea), pretty weird ass if you ask me. The best part was the gift shop at the end where I bought a rubber ball for £2.50.


http://walkinginmymind.southbankcentre.co.uk/index



After that we had lunch at a Wagamama, i'm not sure if Oz Clark would have approved of our choice of lunch as afterwards we went to Vinopolis.



It was good fun and in around 3 hours we managed 11 * 25ml tastes of wine (5 normal, 4 rose, 2 premium), a gin cocktail, and for the brave (not me) two rums.



On the way to the museum I lost a coin toss with April and ended up having to go in the water fountain.
















Don't worry, I hardly got wet, the fountain was on a timed switch so you could safely walk through when the jet was off. If i'd have designed the fountain, I would have designed it to be controlled manually. just as some fat tourist walked over the jet push the button. He , he!

More dead bodies

I found another dead mouse of the weekend. This one was not a pretty site. Once again the I was the hero of the day and removed it.

I thought i'd beaten my stereo into submission

I tried to use the internet radio on my stereo last night and it's decided not to work!!! Bloody thing! I can hear April's distant voice in the background.

You wouldn't have this trouble if you'd have bought a mac version

I'll have another go at the weekend.

Thy Lord moveth in mysterious ways

I found a bird poo stained pound coin right outside my front door this morning, coincidentally for breakfast at work this morning we have Belgian waffles with blueberries and creme for £1.

I'm taking that as a sign that Jebus wants me to stuff my face with one.

I've finally got my stereo working properly

After Kris got most of my stereo working a couple of months ago I was still stuck with having to copy all of my music manually onto the stereo's hard drive. I managed to get to R but decided to give up and look into getting the darn thing to work.

I was pretty sure that I wouldn't have been the first person to come across the same problem so I looked on line. After 20 mins or so I found it. My firewall was blocking it. Doh! Nice of my firewall to tel me though.

I've now got 24gb on there. We've still a few outstanding to copy across but we're almost there. Roll on the bbq for it's grand unveiling.

Broken umbrella

I noticed yesterday that my umbrella was broken. It's quite annoying as it was quite pricey and it's the second one i've bought myself in the last year and a half.

However it's a blessing in disguise as it does smell a little of cat wee. The bloody cats left me a little present when I left it out to dry one day.

I may have to steal a work one.

Work news

I've been pretty busy at work for the past few months now, we've a big deadline coming up on Friday (Lloyd's ICAs) but by the looks of it we're a little ahead of schedule so fingers crossed the next few weeks will be a bit more relaxed. That is until we have to make a load of new changes to our model before the really big deadline in September.

We had a guy round last week to quote for replacing some fence panels (still to send us the quote, hopefully he won't mess us around like the last guy) .

Yesterday we had a guy round to quote putting new flooring down in our hall / living room. He seemed pretty keen, but so would you be when it's going to cost us over a grand!

Eek!

Are cats evil?

This weekend we had a frog and a mouse in the house. Bloody things! And guess who had to catch them?

At lease they tend not to kill them.

Anyone for a game of ping pong?

We went out with some friends last night and ended up going to a dim sum restaurant (small chain) called ping pong.

It was kind of like an oriental tapas, you choose a bunch of small startery type things each and just stuff your face. All in all very good.

No sleep for the wicked

The cats woke me up at three this morning, and my inability to go back to sleep after being woken up combined with the heat meant I didn't get back to sleep until 6 in the morning!

Needless to say I am shattered.

Unfortunately i'm out for a meal with friends tonight, then off to see a band tomorrow night and then at an engagement party in London on Saturday.

I am doing nothing on Sunday.

Battered Mars Bars

On my way home from touch rugby last night I stopped off at our new fish and chip shop to buy April a battered Mars Bar (she's wanted to try one for ages).

The, shall I say large girl that served me told me that they were lovely. I said "oh really" and she proceeded to tell me that she'd battered and deep fried everything.

Snickers
Kit Kat
Malteasers
A whole tub of Miniature Heroes!

Dear me. She needs help. Just because you work in a fish and chip shop doesn't mean that you need to eat the produce every minute of the day.

Given all the build up April scoffed the lot in around 20 seconds.

Verdict: "It tastes like fish"

Not my first choice of puddings I have to say.

Urgh, I do not feel well 2

I went out with James last night and do not feel well this morning.

Poor me.