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Okay, so it's very similar to my old car. But please note: Newer model, twice (nearly) the horsepower, tasty wheels, and loads of optional new shiny bits. And a lot like, newer. And shinier. And with less (as in none) dents and scratches.
Yay! Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to give it a bit of a run-in, courtesy of the M50 and the back roads of Co. Wicklow.
(Apologies to Matt for again talking about underwear but I have to....)
So I went bra and knick shopping this evening with my shopping bud Lyn, and as usual went to M & S (cause they are the best ones ever) and managed to spend over ?100 on undies, is that insane, there were three bras and three pants (mathcing obviosly) , I didn't even think about it till I got home and was cutting off the tags and one of the pairs of pants was 12 poxywell euro, what the foooook?? Seriously, are they made of gold or something. I don't understand, considering the bra that matches them was only ?24!!
In other news, I also bought two of the same jacket in different colours, is this insane?
We're going out 3 (THREE!) years today.
I think that's pretty amazing. Not surprising, but amazing nevertheless.
We've had our disagreements, but never had a "row", as such.
We're very much in love.
We're way, way, way past the stage where silences are awkward.
We have a house together!
We've been on several holidays, and we shall go on a lot more.
We're not sick of each other.
I watch "America's Next Top Model" with her, and she watches "Battlestar Galactica" with me.
And we give each other huge hugs every day.
We're totally brilliant. :-)
I love you Nikki! xoxoxoxo
...they send the entire building a link to a YouTube video.
[Granted, it's that Ok Go video with the treadmills (ie not the greatest rock video ever), but I still reckon he's pretty cool.]
So after MONTHS of not reading a proper book, by proper I mean a book that is not some easily read chick lit heap of shite that I have borrowed from one of my female roomies, I have finally dug myself out of the trap of trashy magazine (ie: Now, New, Heat, Grazia etc) and shitty crappy crap books and started to read a failly intelligent book, Fermat's Last Theorem, I stole it off the top of the microwave in my house, it is my Statistics Studying roomie Liam's book, and I cannot believe that I can a) read it as maths actually scares me (not adding like, but you know theorems and the like) and b) that I am actually understanding it, "woohoo" I say.
So being in this frame of mind I have gone insane on Amazon and in Hughes and Hughes in Dunlaoghaire, and have bought a total of 11 books, I hope to do some reviewing of sorts, but I am not promising anything.....and I am also posed with the problem...which one do I start with, I have whittled it down to three favourites: John Peel 'Margrave Of The Marshes", Margaret Atwood 'The Tent' or Ernest Hemingway 'A Movable Feast' hmm, its ok, I won't be finished this theorem thingy for at least another week.
(On another note...I ate far too much dinner and have now got what I can only describe as a food baby, in that my normally flat tum is now rounded and full of food and a muffin, I am considering vomitting, whoops!)
These dudes borrowed this photo for a post on their blog. Which is fine, as all my Flickr photies are CC-licensed, and they referenced me in their post (as per the "attribution" stipulation of the license).
So it's all cool like, y'know?
Oh Jebus, I found a grey hair, well I think its one anyway, Matt couldnt see it earlier, but I don't think that he was looking hard enough. It's either grey, or blond, and I can't see how I have a blond hair because my hair is so dark, aaaaaaaagh. I am 23 dudes, is this the end of the world? Is it because I was so stressed out because of my unemployment? Should I pull it out? Or is the old wives tale about three growing back to replace it true? Advice needed pronto s'il vous plait!!!
I started the new job last Monday, big mistake, I hated it. They ?forgot? that I was starting that day (there was 4 people there before me and I was the fifth, its not like they had a million employees or anything) so they had nothing set up for me at all, yes they should really purchase a diary to pencil these things into. Anyway, they were dicks from the word go, no training, no training manual, no showing me how to log onto the ?system? they have NO passwords for anything which I find a bit thick seeing as they are a website, and these things are apparently very easy to break into.
They gave me dirty looks everytime I left my desk (for pees and tea making purposes) expected a person who had only been there three weeks to ?train? me in etc. They gave me no information on the company and kept on using shite ?buzz? words, which I fucking HATE with a passion, all this COB bollox, fuck off dude, just say ?at the end of the day? or something equally normal, COB my hole is what I say. Maybe I am not a professional, but these guys were taking the piss.
My email was down for 4 days and they didn?t seem to be bothered that I couldn?t communicate with customers, and their internet connection was shite too (yes this is a website remember). All over the shop, completely unorganised to a ridiculous degree and had NO people skills. They totally lied to me in the interviews. There are two of them in it, a man and a woman, the woman was a weapon, basically ignored me the whole time, she obviously has major issues, and the man, who was the rudest fuck ever. Anyway so I got mass pissed off yesterday when he ?shhh?d? me twice when I was on a call to a customer who was on their mobile hands free. I was talking at a normal level. Yes I have a loud voice but I was far from shouting. And he also moved me away from one of the other girls because I sniggered once at 27 mins past 5 on my first day, in case I distracted her or some shite. Wanker.
So yesterday they went out to lunch (early) and I emailed him, told him the sceal and ran away (hahhaha). I am a coward, but I wont stand for that shite, no way Jose. Help?..I am unemployed?.its insania!
In case you didn't know, Nikki and I went to Madrid this weekend past. We got the flights as a gift from her Mum & Dad for Christmas (thanks!), which was nice. We had a grand old time, spent mostly idly wandering around the streets and plazas, parks and Tapas Bars. And Starbucks (seriously, breakfast in Madrid was hard to come by, we settled for SB's out of sheer desperation, and convenience).
Madrid is pretty amazing, but definitely what I'd call a typical European Capital City. Very grand in it's architectural stylings, with huge streets, lots of people, a huge amount of history and things to do, but what really struck me as odd was the really low level of English speakers, in all establishments, even restaurants which would seem to be "touristy".. What's really nice is that all over the city there are loads of little parks and gardens, which is perfect for a couple looking to do some serious chilling out of a weekend away. There are also a serious, and I mean serious, amount of fountains. I mean hundreds of them. Everywhere.
Some observations about the city:
Anyhoo. We had a fab time. We strolled around for hours, ate some nice food (lots of bocadillos de tortílla, found one of the only vegetarian restaurants (for me) and one of the only tea rooms (for Nikki) with the help of the AA "city guide" drank some nice wine and beer, went to the zoo (!), and constantly struggled to get out a couple of basic Spanish phrases. And Ryanair kinda redeemed themselves with the ease of getting there and back. Kinda. We're still never flying with them again, unless we really, really have to.
Flickr photoset here.
[Diesel Sweeties, via BoingBoing]
Photoblogging...
Photoblogging...
At night. Lovely. Very chilled.
I've started Twittering.
Seems like a lot of other people are doing the same thing. Some people think it's a colossal waste of time. I think it's yet another thing I can fuck about with, to stop my mind from overheating.
A lot of people who have described Twitter as a load of crap have stated that they don't need to know when people they don't even know are eating a bowl of cereal, leaving work, getting into their car or whatever. Me, I see it as just another blog-thingy, like Flickr mo'blogging or whatever. Someone might see a truck crashing into a river, and update their Twitter via text, and then snap a photo and mo'blog it up on their Flickr. That's pretty cool, I think. Some say it's NOT "web 2.0", but I think it is. I see the phrase "web 2.0" as representing any aspect of the web which is shareable, writable, embeddable, etc. Twitter is all of these things. Plus it couldn't be easier to use.
Now, you may not care what I thought of CSI last night, of that I finally cracked Wii Sports Baseball. If you don't, then don't subscribe. Don't read. But if you want to her the occasional funny observation that people (like me) CBATB, or perhaps read a 140 character message about a huge news story, written by a random stranger, then Twitter is for you.
I'm going to give it a try until I get bored with it, or until it changes the world (I reckon the former is the more likely outcome).
So I'm a Gmailer, like the majority of people I know. Gmail rocks, yeah?
I have this thing where I have the RSS feed for blog comments at the top of my mail view in Gmail, just for fun. I only turned the option on last week.
Every so often, instead of the feed, Gmail will slip one of those "targeted ads" into the feed slot instead of what I want to see there (this seems to me like enough reason for me to turn the option off again).
So today, I was emptying my spambox, and this is the targeted ad that the big G thought I'd be interested in:
Genius , I thought.
BRBBBRBBRBBRBRBRBBRBRBRBRBBBRBRBBRBRBRBRBRBRB
They are power-washing the entire area outside the theatre (where I work, new viewers).
BBRBBRBBBRBRBRBBRBRBBRBBRBBRBBRBRBRBRBRBRBRBR
Oh my God, I think the noise is going to drive me insane.
BRBBRBBRBBRBRBBRBRBBRBBRBRBBRbrbbrbbrbrbbbrbbrbbrb...
It's stopped (but I can still hear it in my head).
Now it's gone from my head. Aaah, peace and quiet. Now I can finally do some work. I can work through a lot of distractions (chiefly, the "I haven't blogged much recently" one), namely the pounding of music (remember, theatre), the grinding of err... grinders, sawing and hammering involved in building sets and scenery, but the relentless noise of a two-stroke pump is not something I can live work through. Even when I put in my earbuds and listen to my iPod, it's still there.
But it's gone now. So I better get on and do some wor...
BRBRBBRBBRBRBRBRBBRBRBRBBRBRBBRBRBRBRBRBRBBRB
Bollocks.
So yesterday was my last day in work, I have to say it was bizarre to say the least, even more bizarre than when I left the hotel I used to work in after nearly 3 years?leaving behind the daily bollocks made me happy, but leaving behind all of the wonderful friends did not. I loved where I sat, beside the window so I could open it and close it as much as I wanted and always enjoyed the afternoon sunshine beating down on me even when it meant that I couldn?t see my computer screen, the best thing about my seat was that no one could see my screen, so basically I could piss about all day and no one even know anything. I loved my parking space (when I got one?but that?s another story), I loved the canteen where we would sit for an hour at lunch time and look at the builders (or Doozers as we liked to call them) while people would walk in, see my carefully prepared balanced lunch and make comments like ?oh my goooood you are so f*ckin healthy all the time, I never see you eating any rubbish? (as if that was a bad thing) and in my head I would answer ?for f*ck sake looooser, you say that to me every single day that you see me, think of another comment, plus I actually LIKE this food, which is why I am eating it because unlike you, you breakfast roll eating f*ck, I don?t NEED to go on a diet, I have actually got a quick metabolism, and also, if I eat sugar or other shite, I feel SICK, I have told you all this about a million times, why don?t you just f*ck off!!!!!!!!!? (yes really, I would actually say this inside my head, just to make myself feel better). Or other comments would be made like ?what?s THAT????? and it would be something like hummus or quinoa, or something equally normal. I will miss my team, well two of them anyway, as the other one member was a dick head, I named her ?Brekki Roll? which then just turned into ?The Roll?. She would eat one at least every day and was the nosiest f*ck ever in the universe, she would see me telling someone something and be all ?what?? WHAT what are you talking about? basically she was a knacker, who thought that she was dead posh, and she ate the smelliest food in the world at her desk, she had worked there for almost nine years and thought that the company would die without her, she moaned about everything, and I mean?everything. She was enormous as well, and had suffered a massive stroke about 2 years ago, she was 44, and yet still ate more shite in one day that I would in a year. Everything was processed shite, sausage rolls dripping with grease, at least a packet of biscuits every single day without fail, marsh mallows by the sackload, peanuts, crisps, mars bars (like 3 a day) and then would ask me how she was going to lose weight, when she found out that I was a former chef, she even asked me would I come up with a diet plan for her. I don?t think that she quite understood that most restaurant food is laced with butter, cream and salt and other bad? foods when eaten too often. I did however manage to keep it from her that I was leaving until Monday last (which is a fat in itself because everyone else knew!!).
According to Dragon I am "someone particularly high up the food chain in the Irish power and influence stakes".
Now, although I'm the person some people go to if they want to get a free ticket to a gig here and there (because I am The Man), and people have been known to ring me because their computer is "broken" (stock answer: turn it off and back on again), and a lot of people I know would ask me about the enormous electronics purchase they're about to make, I wouldn't exactly call myself particularly high up the food chain. Although it's nice that someone else thinks so.
But then again, I don't think Dragon knows anyone else in Ireland.
[note: this entire post is written in the style of someone who is being sarcastically smug. I'm not really The Man, but I do have his e-mail address]
So I was idly browsing my site stats, looking at how we're doing on the hits-pages-visits front (not bad, as it happens), when I noticed a discrepancy. Namely, this image comes up at number 28 on the "top urls" chart. Weird, as the post that image was in was like, a year ago or something.
Then I thought of looking up "kitchen confidential book review" (without the quotes) on the Big G. Turns out my review of the Anthony Bourdain book is at number 8! Very interesting indeed. Either there are very few reviews of this book (there are loads) or the review was a pretty thorough/good one, and lots of people clicked on it (bit big-headed of me, but definitely possible).
So, for all those people who came this way looking for that review of the excellent Kitchen Confidential, and ended up having a poke around to see what else there was, hello! Welcome to the madness. There's some good stuff hiding away in the crevices, from what I've heard. Have a look, you know you want to...
Yesterday, after putting it off for what seems like an eternity, I finally set the clock on our DVD player back to the correct time, after it had reset itself following a power cut some weeks back.
Today, there was another power cut, and the clock on the DVD player now reads 6.37pm.
Coincidence?
"Set in a separate storyline not related to the "Trailer Park Boys" Television show, but with the same lovable characters. The boys get arrested for robbing an ATM machine and spend 18 months in jail. When the get out, they decide to pull off "The Big Dirty" which is to steal a large amount of coins because they are untraceable and quit their life of crime forever."
(From IMDB Page)
Just finished watching this on err... streaming video on some highly disreputable video site (ahem... delicious link in the sidebar... ahem...) and it's brilliant.
Well, if you're a fan of the (hilarious) adventures of the rum-and-coke drinkin', dope-smokin', smalltime crime-dealin', pot-growin', shopping cart fixin', rhyme bustin' boys from the Sunnyvale Trailer Park it's brilliant. If you've never seen the TV show, well, it doesn't really matter. You may find all the lines and smartass remarks that bit funnier if you've watched every episode of the series, and enjoyed them, several times over (like me) of course, but as the quote above says, this is a completely separate adventure from the goings on in the series (so, newbs are more than welcome to enjoy the goings-on, but you better fasten your bicycle clips, because this shit is fucked).
This necessitates some re-capping of what exactly these boys do in their free time (which is basically all the time). This is ok though, as anything that's gone over is done so briefly and concisely, leaving more room for improved, movie-quality hi-jinks from our intrepid group of misfits. This is good. We like hi-jinks.
I won't go into any of the story here, as that would absolutely ruin it. Yes, I respect the subject matter that much. I think Trailer Park Boys is one of the best things on TV, and I would place it above Shameless in the overall scumbag comedy genre, in my very humble opinion (I welcome debate on that matter too!). Suffice it to say that the boys get up to their usual brand of nonsense and hoojah-ery, they go to jail, do some crimes, eat hotdogs, Randy eats cheeseburgers, Julian always has a rum n' coke (with ice, in a glass) in his hand, you know, it's Trailer Park Boys.
And it's an hour and a half long.
And there's a couple of fairly big set-ups, and a couple of big-ish stunts.
But it's still Trailer Park Boys. And it's an hour and a half long. And that's why it's brilliant. Really, seriously, totally brilliant stuff, from start to finish. But it's not for everyone. If any of this review has put you off in any way, if words like "dope-smoking" and "pot-growing" and "crime" put you off in any way, then don't watch it. It's definitely an acquired taste, that's for sure.
(Oh, and Mr. Lahey is constantly shitface drunk as usual, and the shit-talk is totally off the richter. Here's a gem of Mr. Lahey "shit talk" for you to saviour, TPB fans)
4.21-en
Geek Support, fixing of bugger-ups, moral support, code splicing, tech. administration, whining, über-nerdery and fetching of fluffy coffees by 
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