Birthday meal from Steve

http://www.bodeansbbq.com/

Jacob's Ladder Ribs.  Urgh...  Too much.  Nice white shirt eh April?

I'll get Steve back next week when it's his birthday.

Most expensive pair of socks ever

I had to pay customs and excise £22 in order for them to release a parcel from Australia.

Great...

Something new to do on my commute

I've downloaded a new DVD ripping tool for my PC so I can watch movies / dvds on my tablet / mobile.

What was the first DVD I copied?  Lord of the Rings extended edition.  Bring it on.

Well that was close

Liverpool scraped through into Europe after a last minute goal by Luis Suarez.  We controlled the majority of the game but it was against Hearts so hardly spectacular.  I guess the team is evolving and it's a work in progress.  Who's next?  Arsenal... great.

Carroll's gone to West Ham on loan too, let's hope there's some transfers tomorrow on transfer deadline day / my birthday.  The new Football Manager will be out in a few months so i'm sure I can turn it around.

You are ace

It was a phrase we used to use at school to describe how rubbish someone was. so when I got this message from the comedy DVD website I wasn't sure if they were being sarcastic.

Arrrrrr.......  the good old days.  It was good to see Aston and Ross at Shaheen's wedding.  We all reverted back to being 13.  Excellent.

Indoor market

Loads of flowers, meat, vegetable and bits.

Ross pulled

We found Ross a +1 for Shaheen's wedding.  The young girl doesn't look impressed.

Maybe they need to buy bigger plates

My steak with April and Ross.

Why?

The toilet of our Jersey hotel. Why have a phone next to the  toilet?
To call reception when you run out of toilet paper?

Great invention

The Collapsible Cross

Seriously tempted

http://www.eyestorm.com/vic-reeves.html

Vic Reeves art

Fat bastard

Celeb spot, Roy Chubby Brown at our hotel in Jersey. I had spotted a poster up in town yesterday of his gig and when this fat guy popped into one if our hotel bars with his four meat head goons I put two and two together.

Comedy purchase of the week

I've been listening to Richard Herring's latest series of podcasts. Edinburgh Fringe. All very funny.

I know he's only joking but his two shows out there haven't really been sell outs. And he does sound quite down about it. It got me thinking, he does all this stuff for free so the least I can do his buy a DVD or two. He may not like the Stewart Lee purchase though.

More bottom

Bottom's up!

God help us.

Another one bites the dust

I hear it happens to the best of us. Shaz's wedding this Sunday. Eek! Let's try and get him shit faced on his birthday tomorrow. Plenty of time to recover...

Am I old?

Most definitely...

I was chatting to a couple of the 'kids' at work today and they started talking about a chap called Akon. I said that I'd never heard of acorn. A mass of laughter ensued. And then more laughter.

Am I old? Should I care about the chap?

No. And I stand by my no.

Looking up his wiki page, what a twat. What a complete twat. Ex convict / borderline paedophile (proved innocent?) / r&b  / rapper.

What a role model / hero.

I'm pretty glad I've never heard of the idiot. The guys in my office are still laughing.

I'm still glad he's a nobody in my life.

Farourite story of the week

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19349921

Spanish fresco restoration botched by amateur (BBC NEWS)
An elderly parishioner has stunned Spanish cultural officials with an alarming and unauthorised attempt to restore a prized Jesus Christ fresco.

I have to say if this picture ever came up for auction on e-bay I would pay up to £100 for it.  As it makes me chuckle everytime I look at it.  He, he. 

I've found a new podcast

Talking Metal. Just listened to the first 10 minutes and think it could be good. The last 7 mins of that 10 was an Iron Maiden song, To Tame A Land. Sold!

Not sure how they get the authority to use the music, all the other podcasts I listen to certainly aren't allowed. Who cares? It's pretty good so far. Also I downloaded episode 387 so if I like it there's plenty of back log to go through.

Home coming

Just had a call from the vet and Biscuit can come home.

Yeah!

Stupid cold

I still have this bloody cold. The latest stage is me turning into a phlegm and snot monster. Yum... Coughing till one in the morning is great. I've had one form of it for nearly a week, when will it end? Urgh!

Poor biscuit

Biscuit's staying at the vets tonight. The vet thinks she's got something wrong with her liver so after a few blood tests he recommended that he takes a biopsy. We took her in this morning and everything went well but they're keeping her in just in case, due to pick her up tomorrow after work. We'll find out the results of this test in a couple of days. Poor thing.

Our garden

It hasn't changed much since we bought the place 4 years ago except for the two trees we planted that have gone nuts. At least 10 times the size.

It's started

And the football season has started. Bloody hot though.

Look at the bloody screen cat!

Trying out the reverse camera on my tablet.

Breakfast of kings

I bought too much BBQ stuff today so may as well have some for breakfast

Off ill

I'm off ill today and am not feeling well.  Nasty clogged up, headache and a bit of a temperature.  Boo.

I've done a couple of hours work though.  Fairly productive really.  Might try and do this more often.  At the moment we have a couple of graduates that are always asking questions and at times it can be quite hard to actually get anything done.  To top that off we've now got a uni student in for a month who i'm having to work with quite closely.  Urgh.

Match of the Day

Gits in IT block blogs at work 1-0 (IT v's SC)


SC finds a work around so he can post to the blog through the back door 1-1

Gits in IT turn off access to the WIFI for staff 2-1

SC befriends graduate in team who know a graduate in IT and gets the WIFI password 2-2

Gits in IT turn off the use of USB memory sticks 3-2

SC gets his own website for his blog so can go directly there anyway. 3-3

Extra time

SC finds that he can turn his phone onto hard drive mode when charging which makes it act like a USB and bypasses their security 3-4

Winner SC

People will be talking about this match for years to come.

Well that was interesting...

Just had a Turkish haircut. I booked my normal place for a haircut in the city and turned up 5 mins late after getting held up slightly at work. They'd already filled my slot which I felt was a bit cheeky. Anyway, not to worry I walk past another everyday on my commute so decided to give that a try.

It was quite an experience, the full works. Hair washed, hot towels on the face, rock on the radio which the proceeded to turn up when a decent track came on,  weird massage on my arms and to top it all off he dipped the end of a stick in paraffin, set light to it then proceeded to dab it on my ears! Ouch! I presume to get rid of ear hair... But could be wrong.

All in all very good and only slightly more expensive than my usual.  All this excitement nearly made me forget that they also gave me a bottle of beer whilst I was waiting / having the cut.

Brilliant!

Cold

I've got a stinking cold.  Really bunged up and have a bit of a fever.  So much so I have my fan on at work and i'm still sweating.  Great!

Added benefit

An added benefit of having my own url is me being able to go to my blog whilst at work.  Blogs are usually filtered with websense.  Now I can go there with impunity.

Bloody busy

It's our busiest period at work at the moment and am feeling massively demotivated. I'm in charge of sorting out our biggest risk (catastrophe) and most of the numbers we've been working on have been more or less abandoned. We're quite rightly going to have to use some very high level assumptions. The more I look into the data we're given the more it's made clear just how inappropriate they are to use for our capital model.
This might sound bad but at least we're aware of it! 8 months ago when I was tasked with it my team blindly followed what we were given. Now the whole company is aware of the issues we face. The more I look into it the more I get demotivated. I mean, if only other teams give a shit...

Test 2

Does my posting app still work?

Watdefu has landed!

Thanks to April www.Watdefu.com now works. I think your old links should redirect you anyway but just in case check your rss feeds etc.

The nutters have done it again

This time they've sprayed the tree gold. Not sure what the council will think of that.

Funny though.

BT festival

Here's some photos from the Hyde Park gig yesterday.

April's old band mate's gig

We went to this great venue to show support to April's old band mate Paul and one of his new bands The Dominant Ego.  In order.

Popping into the pub next door to find two of our favorite beers.  Very rare to find April's choice of Little Creatures all the way from sunny Perth.

The Garage - Min Festival Foxton Sound Garden.  It basically was a disused garage.  Pretty cool though.

 First Band

 The beer on offer

The Dominant Ego

 April looking cool

Cairo Sun, awesome American dude.  A cross between Chris Cornell, Creed, Tenacious D and Michael Bolton...







We then went to a quite a cool bar and forced them to put the athletics on where we watched Mo win his second Gold of the games!

Monster supplies

 We stumbled across this funny shop on the way to the gig yesterday, full oforite/ all sorts of goodies.  Zombie flavored sweets were my favorite.

Photos from the beer festival

 In order. 
First pint
Gandalf the barman
Me trying a beer from Kettering
Guy with poodle hair
Good venue (Olympia)
Beer Barrel bike
More LOTR, a dwarf, or at least he looks like one

Strange contraption

On the bus on the way to meeting up with April yesterday. Not as good as the beer bus in Bruges, there's probably a photo of it in the archive on the right. July 2006

Poor Biscuit

We had to take Biscuit to the vet this morning and it doesn't  sound too good. She's had couple of problems before but she's been a little worse recently. Not that you'd know it but she's actually lost a nearly a kg in less that a year. The vet took a blood sample and will get back to us next week. Probably Monday. The poor thing had to get here chest shaved so he could get the blood. I've not seen her since I let her back out again. I hope she's forgiven me.

Bloody virus

My laptop's got a bloody virus so am sitting in on a lovely day watching a Mcafee  technician fix it. Or hopefully fix it! It's been a real arse and have been trying to sort it out all morning. Fingers crossed.

Birthday present

Must Have Cute: Star Wars Pincushion Cats

If anyone's stuck for something to get me for my birthday this year. I'd like a Han  Solo.

Tablet test

I've been allowed to use my new tablet early. Yeah!

Biscuit helping me out

Doing a bit if work tonight. Biscuit's helping with the security tag and some notes.

Same photo

Same photo I have in my en suite.

Sturggling to get my blog sorted

I knew it wouldn't be this easy.  I'll need to get April on the case.

Games day (edit, thanks Kris)

I went back home yesterday or at least to Kettering.  We had a board and card games day.


Overall I think I won the most games (although others may beg to differ)

Joint Winners = Stuart (Flux * 2, warhammer chaos in the old world * 1), Ben (Bloodbowl Manager * 1, Muchkin * 1, Infiltration *1)
3rd = Kris (Flux * 1)
4th = Ian (Nothing)

Get ready to change your links

I've finally got round to buying my own domain name

watdefu.com

The company I used said it could take up to a day to activate so I guess i'll move it over once that's cleared.

Add it to your favourites
Update google reader
Change your rss feed

They all come out for the Olympics

Someone has turned a cut down tree (on my route to work) and turned it into an Olympic shrine.

In case you're wondering, yes that is the Olympic Torch.  And it's also a bandoleer of spray painted two pence pieces to represent medals.

Jeez!  Nutters!

Highs and lows

It certainly is a roller coaster ride working in the City.

There's a new Nandos in the City so I arranged to meet April there at lunch.  April had meetings so by the time she'd finished and we'd met up there was a queue to get in round the corner.

As chance would have it the place we ended up going to had peri-peri chicken.  Sadly when I tasted it, it was only fried chicken.

Going to Nandos for lunch = up
Nandos is too busy = down
Peri-peri chicken for sale somewhere else = up
Not peri-peri chicken = down

Boo!  We're going to try again next week really early.  Fingers crossed.

Guess who's getting a fancy tablet for his birthday?

That will be me.

A Samsung galaxy 10.1 64gb.  Hopefully it'll delay me getting a new laptop (due March 2013).

It was either that or a big new tv.

Really? I can think of 20 better

Vertigo is named 'greatest film of all time'

CRITICS TOP 10 FILMS OF ALL TIME

1. Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958)

2. Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941)

3. Tokyo Story (Ozu, 1953)

4. La Regle du jeu (Renoir, 1939)

5. Sunrise: a Song for Two Humans (Murnau, 1927)

6. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 1968)

7. The Searchers (Ford, 1956)

8. Man with a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, 1929)

9. The Passion of Joan of Arc (Dreyer, 1927)

10. 8 ½ (Fellini, 1963)

Source: Sight & Sound

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-19078948

What about?

Dumb and Dumber

Grosse Pointe Blank

Dodgeball

There's Something About Mary

Man on Fire

Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Rings

Lord of the Rings: Two Towers

Lord of the Rings: Return of the King

Star Wars: New Hope

Star Wars:  Empire Strikes Back

Star Wars: Return of the Jedi

Shawshank Redemption

National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation

The Great Outdoors

Office Space
Pulp Fiction
The Castl
Back to the Future

Spaceballs

Inception

What do critics know ?  Not one is later than 1968.

Trains buggered again tonight

They're suggesting head to Victoria instead of Cannon Street.  That's bloody miles away!!!  I think i'm going to risk hitting London Bridge...  or maybe get the Waterloo and City and try to catch a train from there.

Incidentally this has nothing to do with the Olympics.  Points failure at Cannon Street.  Bloody South Eastern Railway.  Bunch or retards.

Two days two evacuations

We had a fire drill this morning.  Excellent.    That's two in two days. I didn't go to the muster point though, I went and grabbed a coffee and an almond croissant.  Rebellious, I know.