Andy's Blog

The English are feeling the pinch in relation to recent terrorist threats and have raised their security level from “Miffed” to “Peeved”.  Soon, though, security levels may be raised yet again to “Irritated” or even “A Bit Cross”.  The English have not been “A Bit Cross” since the blitz in 1940 when tea supplies all but ran out.  Terrorists have been re-categorised from “Tiresome” to a “Bloody Nuisance”.   The last time the British issued a “Bloody Nuisance” warning level was in 1588 when threatened by the Spanish Armada.

The Scots raised their threat level from “Pissed Off” to “Let’s get the Bastards”.  They don’t have any other levels.  This is the reason they have been used on the front line of the British army for the last 300 years.

The French government announced yesterday that it has raised its terror alert level from “Run” to “Hide”.  The only two higher levels in France are “Collaborate” and “Surrender”.  The rise was precipitated by a recent fire that destroyed France’s white flag factory, effectively paralysing the country’s military capability.

It’s not only the French who are on a heightened level of alert. Italy has increased the alert level from “Shout loudly and excitedly” to “Elaborate Military Posturing”.  Two more levels remain: “Ineffective Combat Operations” and “Change Sides”.

The Germans also increased their alert state from “Disdainful Arrogance” to “Dress in Uniform and Sing Marching Songs”.  They also have two higher levels: “Invade a Neighbour” and “Lose”.

Belgians, on the other hand, are all on holiday as usual, and the only threat they are worried about is NATO pulling out of Brussels.

The Spanish are all excited to see their new submarines ready to deploy.  These beautifully designed subs have glass bottoms so the new Spanish navy can get a really good look at the old Spanish navy.

Americans meanwhile and as usual are carrying out pre-emptive strikes, on all of their allies, just in case.

And in the southern hemisphere…

New Zealand has also raised its security levels – from “baaa” to “BAAAA!”.

Due to continuing defence cutbacks (the air force being a squadron of spotty teenagers flying paper aeroplanes and the navy some toy boats in the Prime Minister’s bath), New Zealand only has one more level of escalation, which is “I hope Australia will come and rescue us”.

Australia , meanwhile, has raised its security level from “No worries” to “She’ll be right, mate”.  Three more escalation levels remain: “Crikey!’, “I think we’ll need to cancel the barbie this weekend” and “The barbie is cancelled”.  So far no situation has ever warranted use of the final escalation level.

I *really* wish I could take credit for writing this, unfortunately I can’t.  Received in my email inbox today and copied here for your viewing pleasure once I had wiped away the tears

Buggly Eyed Beasties

I looked at the ‘langostinos’ and rather disturbingly they looked back.  I’ll give most things a try, but not when those ‘things’ are able to look at me, with more than a little recrimination, and have more legs than foodstuffs should have!

“Look Dad! Buggly eyed beasties!” the boys bellowed across the table at me, knowing that the unofficial name that I gave this favoured Spanish dish gets me in more than a little trouble with the natives.

I also can’t help but feel a little queasy when said natives are ripping apart the aforementioned buggly eyed beasties and leave what looks like a slaughter of the cast of fingerbobs.

The Christmas meal just doesn’t seem the same without an obscene amount of roasted turkey and a feeling afterwards that you’ll be pooping feathers for the next few days.

This year I thought that, rather than ask for my usual ‘useful’ gift, I would get something completely impractical and feed the big kid in me.  Santa didn’t disappoint and I am now the proud owner of a mini Apache AH-64 remote controlled helicopter!  The little devil fits in my hand and buzzes around the room menacing all that are within the vicinity… mainly due to my ineptness with the remote and the fact that it’s an absolute bastard to control.

In fact the full danger of me being behind the controls of the helicopter meant that I was banished to the spare room to try and perfect my skills without taking out a family member.  The “you’ll take somebody’s eye out with that!” argument wasn’t won by myself when I pointed out that it *WAS* an attack helicopter.

Push the controls upwards and the helicopter shoots up and nearly hits the roof. Suddenly letting go of the control lever to stop it hitting aforementioned roof and it slams into the floor.  Buggar!  Push controls gently upwards and the helicopter lifts 4 foot off the floor and starts rotating in an annoying circle.  Looking down at the remote control for the “rudder trim”, as I remember the instruction sheet mentioning something about this, and the little bastard exits stage left and out the window onto the balcony.  “Ooooh shit!”

The little helicopter was never designed to fly outside, and it certainly wasn’t designed to hover from 6 floors up a block of flats.  As I run to the balcony it gave me one last look and started its rapid descent downwards.  I think the roadrunner type “meep meep” was of my own imagination.

Lunging over the plant pots that lined the balcony and desperately pointing the remote control at the gravity aided bit of plastic I managed to at least check the descent to a plummet.

I don’t think the shouted “Sorry!” to the bouffant haired old dear, tottering along the street outside, did much to calm her nerves.  I don’t think she appreciated the last desperate act of skill that changed the kamikaze dive bombing into a crash landing into the bush next to her.  I also don’t think the liberal sprinkling of potted plant dirt in her face as she looked up was also much appreciated.

My grasp of Spanish is basic, to say the least, but I got the gist of her feelings.  “Yeah, yeah, and that’s for the armada” I muttered after her angrily retreating frame, and started the long trek down the stairs to retrieve the errant present.

Awww buggar, t’would seem that the powers-that-be have finally swung their Sauron like gaze towards me and wondered; “WTF does he do?”

So I now find myself, just before Christmas, in the position of having my role officially classed as “at risk”.  As my manager helpfully put it at my 1:1 interview; “It’s not you, but your role that’s at risk”.  I think I feel better.

However, I am taking this rather positively and am not *too* down.  It doth give me the opportunity to see what new adventures are available out there and I have about 6 months in which to do it in (or possibly 12 if you read the rather vague HR document in another way; head slanted at a jaunty 30 degree angle kind of way).

That's me that is..

So I am currently calling upon the mighty powers of Web 2.0, and sacrificing my first born upon its altar (sorry Alex but the Internet is a cruel, yet just, deity) to see what can be found for a jobbing IT Guru without actually getting up from my seat… well actually this blog post comes more from a Pod than a seat, but I’m painting a picture here…

…fin!

I managed to win a new iPod Shuffle!  The thing is truly tiny and now takes pride of place as I pursue my increasingly fruitless task of developing a physique….

…although pear-shaped is a physique, it’s not the one I’m really striving for, rather get away from!

So I can now be found bouncing around the gym, with  diddy wee iPod attached to jogging trousers, desperately trying to pump iron to the tunes of Marilyn Mansun, Iron Maiden, Hoobastank, Guns n’ Roses, Nickelback, Rammstein, and many other devils music practitioners.

Now if I could just get rid of this damn cold!  Although on the positive side, going around the gym equipment sneezing, coughing and sniffing and telling the other gym users “I haven’t felt right since Mexico” is getting me on the equipment far quicker than previous outings.

Karate tonight, although I’m sure the same ‘Mexico’ reference will not work quite as well on Sensei!

If the week was on a sliding scale, measuring how well it had gone, it would definitely be pointing to the middle ’neutral’ ground.

From swings deep into the negative at the beginning of the week with the loss of a friend, not in the bereaved sense of the word, to swings in the other direction with the re-discovery of old friends.

From work and injury managing to stop me attending senior karate classes this week, although the positive is that work is finally starting to get interesting, to finally getting the spark back when presented with a pencil and a blank canvas; Although for some reason when presented with a blank photoshop canvas and a mouse I only seem able to doodle little cartoons… What’s going on there?

I have even started baking thanks to the ever helpful Mr Evans (@phevans).

However, I still can’t shake the feeling that the negatives will be deeper felt than the positives.  Methinks it’s time to go-a-visiting next week, and finally fulfill some long outstanding beer promises, to play catch up and revisit simpler times.

…of course the scales can also extend to the “Oh shit, noooooo!” end of the spectrum, especially when you learn of  ‘Jade Goody the musical‘!

Its either time to emigrate or await the four horses of the apathetic apocalypse with open arms.

I am sat in front of the PC and desperately thinking of what I want to do.

I want to draw, but can only doodle a couple of silly cartoons and I can do so much more than that.. if only I could figure out what it was I wanted to draw or what medium to use; pen, pencil, pastels or photoshop with the wacom tablet?

I want to do some more PHP web development, but have so far only developed the equivalent of a “hello world” application and I have certainly done much more that that.. I can’t even figure out what Object Classes or Libraries I would want to use.

So I am sitting looking out of the metaphorical window, as I don’t have a real one in my roof space office, and thinking; “dammit since when did life start impeding on my playtime?”

So it would seem that there’s no hiding up here either…  Which is damn rude of the real world!

*HUGELY* tired today, I really should go to bed much earlier than I am doing currently.  I think I didn’t hit the sack until 1.30 this morning – stupid really.

It did at least give me time to sort out some of the new music I have “acquired”, get rid of some of the duplicates albums I had misfiled, sort out some of the tags that were wrong and copy them to the external hard drive ready for others to “review”.  Annoyingly the first thing I noticed when I fired up the laptop at work, ready to listen to some music, was a whole load of mis-tagged tracks which have also found their way onto my iPhone.. BUGGAR!

Work was abuzz this morning with the news of a planned 2,100 job cuts announced on the BBC News website, and literally as I am typing this there’s news of a *further* 2,100 job cuts.. DOUBLE BUGGAR!

Probably not the best time to be feeling tired and looking lethargic at work.  Unfortunately the swim this lunchtime hasn’t helped much either, and I still haven’t managed the 20 lengths without stopping!

To add to the tiredness, peevedness and alarm I can now add “lonely”.  Online friends seem to have disappeared and chats and updates from MSN and Facebook have dried up to a trickle.  This could, of course, just be a by-product of me trying to be offline a little more and keeping to my ‘talk only when talked to’ policy, which I am hoping will make me a little less annoying and let others actually lead a life. 

Time to venture out maybe?

Ah well, I need to wake up before my Karate class tonight and mentally prepare.  The Wednesday class is always a tough one and I need to work on my Kukutsu Dachi and Shuto Uki, before my students arrive, if I want to attain my next belt.

Methinks it’s time to hit the coffee again, or if things get too bad; to pop a caffeine bean and suck on it for the remainder of the day!

Edit 1: Update -  The 2 x 2,100 job cuts aren’t within my section of the company, which hopefully means I won’t be invited to a meeting to “discuss my career options” anytime soon.  

Thanks for the words of concern though guys n’ gals, much appreciated

Edit 2: Just to prove me a damn neurotic liar, about 10 minutes after posting this little update; up pops two different people on MSN for a chat, and three messages on facebook!

Tis the first full working week of 2009, and all is quiet when I finally step out into the new years morn’ at 6.30am and crunch into the first settled snow of the year!  It’s hard to dispel the childlike delight when you see the winter wonderland spread out in front of you.. or at least it is for me; I am still a kid at heart trapped in a big gangly body.

I even managed to chuck my first snowball of the year!  I don’t think my mate expected the snowball to come flying over the 6ft fence, let alone at that time of the morning, or even saw from whence it came.. but the cursed whimper as it went down the back of his neck was most satisfying

Resolution Watch:  The ‘Get Fit’ resolution is still on track, hence the being up and out at 6.30am this morning and have managed to get to the Gym on alternate days as planned, and swimming every lunchtime.  So far, so good!

The ‘Two Belts’ resolution doesn’t really kick off until Tuesday when the Senior Karate classes start back up, but I am already in line for a couple of beatings from fellow Sensei’s.. Not entirely sure that’s gonna help with the resolution.

Unfortunately the ‘Get Offline’ isn’t going too well, am still online far more than I should be and have also started twittering – so that’s not a good sign.  I am trying to stay off MSN a little more than usual and not post so many facebook updates, but it’s *soooo* hard!  A geek’s addiction is never appreciated.

I was thinking of adding another resolution to the already long list, that of ‘Stop being so damn shy!’.  Unfortunately this is one trait I have had for the longest time, and is one of my bigger burdens (amongst many other competing burdens).

The online ’me’ is a lot more confident than the physical ‘me’, which can sometimes make for fractured conversations and a lack of eye contact.  Unfortunately some people read that the wrong way and think me stand-off’ish.  I think the online ‘me’ is the more truthful version, I just need to work on bringing that out into the real world a lot more often!

Edit: For some reason I have the song “Reason’s to be cheerful, Part 3″ by Ian Drury and the Blockheads running around my head as I write the shyness section.. I think that’s a good sign :-/

…
It’s time to light the lights
It’s time to meet the Muppets on the Muppet Show tonight.

There is something very comforting when you fully embrace your inner ‘Muppetness’, a realisation that sometimes it takes WAY too much time and effort to be miserable and that life really shouldn’t be taken THAT seriously anyway!

The shedding of some expectations has lifted a huge weight from me and in large respects has made me go; “what the fff…lipping heck were you thinking anyway?!”.  Other issues still need to be resolved, but those I will face in typical muppet fashion… minus some singing and dancing… and chickens (maybe).

So, I am embracing my muppetness and choosing appropriate characters based on my mood for the day.  So watch out for Kermit, Fozzy Bear, Beaker and more importantly Animal!

Until then I am practising my “Mr Boombastic” routine ready for the christmas party discos – so beware!

Continue reading

For better or worse things are-a-changing around here.  First visible change, to the outside world at least, will be the car!  The mighty Volvo will be packed up soon and returned to the Volvo dealer, which is a wee bit of a shame as I actually quite liked the car – but needs must.  Actually what will hurt most is losing the 80GB built in mp3 player, which when crammed with tracks-a-plenty will talk to you as you browse through your uploaded goodies.

I shall miss the old girl’s metallic voice mispronouncing all the album and artist names.  Now, how to hook up the iPhone to the replacement old banger?  At the moment music is my great escape, especially during the commute to work – my ‘acceptable’ bit of reflection time with no sour looks when the music is pumped upto 11 on the dial.

Mood music at the moment is definitely on the darker side of the rainbow at the moment;

• The Drugs Don’t Work by The Verve
• The Artifact And Living by Michael Andrews
• Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol
• Pale Shelter by Tears for Fears
• Pilot by Alisha’s Attic
• Mad World by Tears for Fears (or performed by Michael Andrews/Gary Jules)

On the plus side, and probably a reflection of something deep and profound, I have managed to tag and update the music collection.  So now 14,580 songs (or 1,070 albums) have been tagged, categorised, and album artwork added – which all makes the iPhone/iPod look a lot more visually pleasing!

Now what else can I do to fill up the long nights?