I'm a real blogger now

Just had to delete my first comment spam, so I think that qualifies as having arrived!

Woo. Yay!

Also in large amounts of pain. Starter motor on my car is faulty. I have the "fix it" kit, to er, fix it. Land rover have made it so it's easier to remove the engine than to remove the starter motor. So ended up taking the motor apart while it's still fitted to the car, which means lots of stretching and jamming your hands in small places where you can't see or really reach that well. But at least it now starts. Double woo!

Additional

After 4 hours & 52 minutes I have been knocked out in 27th place.

This means:
a) $33 scoop ticket won
b) I'm bloody knackered as it's daft am.
c) Not doing that again.

Gambling bad kids!

Tubetastic Thursday: You can come if you want to

Greetings pop pickers!

We interrupt this broadcast to bring you the following (almost) exciting information:

It's 2:28 am... 1843 players entered the blogger poker tournament that started, oh, 3 1/2 hours a-bloody-go.

And I'm still playing...
And just like the cute children on daytime tv, I'm now guaranteed a prize. Currently 38 out of 109 left so I've at least won a $11 scoop entry whatever that is.

Hang on a minute... $11, that's about 5 quid. For 3 1/2 hours? Does not compute. Could be worth it if I win the bloody thing, but somehow I doubt it.

Back to our regular programming.

I bring to you:
The carousels - you can come if you want to.


Now no doubt someone is screaming argh no! not more doo wop, make it stop!

But this is of the excellent. Excellent I tell you. I can listen to this a bajillion times, and every time is electricity running down my spine.

Ok, some will say she screams like she's killing cats, but they are also full of the wrong.

There are a few more sides from the carousels out there, and while they're fairly ok, this is definitely their triumph.

The dead man's hand holds Aces and Eights

Ok, so Wild Bill Hickok was playing 5 card draw when killed with that hand.

I however, am a) still alive and b) was playing pot limit omaha.

I also lost out in the below pimped blogger poker tournament. Top 153 get the prizes, and I came 203 out of 1600 entrants. Not too shoddy, given I'm not a huge omaha fan. And there's still tournaments to play the rest of the week for no cost.

So as the lottery used to say before they got banned for false advertising "It could be you".

Schemes and dreams

Hard as it may be to believe, I went to University and survived to get a (poor) degree. This is all ancient history (1996) and is filed on my flickr as "I had a life too once".

I forgot about it, until last week. Found one of the blokes on facebook. Oh, you're successful and have wife, child, house on the hill. I'm not... That was fun. Then another ex Beng bloke contacts me.. wife, 2 x child, house on hill, more success.

(I should perhaps at this point make clear I wish no ill, and am not bothered by their success... I assume they've earned it and thus deserve it. I haven't, and don't.)

At points in the past various peeps have said "we should have a reunion", but nothing has come of it. However, this time I think it could work, and nobody will have to get nailed to anything in pursuit of it. After all, everybody is starting to put their lives on t'interweb.

Without doing much searching emails are exchanged between six of us. Discounting foreign students, those known to have left the country since, those who didn't socialise during the course (I'm thinking of you Gailasuarus), this gives seven more potentially to find. One more can probably be discounted ('cos she's a lady and we're smelly blokes), and a further one (black ball from everyone so far). So that's five to find.

So on Saturday I set off to meet a small group of localish plotters. One wasn't coming out to play, so it was Zulf and Dara and moi. Despite my natural apprehension, we had a really nice time and came up with some perhaps viable strategies for finding the missing people. I'd like to say we haven't changed in what? 14 years, but it would be a lie. I've got fat and mental. Zulf's stopped drinking and Dara appears to be a straight and honest geezer. God have we gone downhill.

There is one slight snag, should we pull it off. What do you do to celebrate this reunion?

Now you could say go to the pub.. but people are older, with house on the hill etc, and it's not much of a draw to get people to come many miles.

Possible thoughts so far include:

Meal out somewhere.... followed by pub.
Blokey things... paintball, go karts etc. followed by pub.
Fly to somewhere cheap and cultural. Ignore the culture and go to the pub.

Any ideas from the blogosphere are most welcome?

Plz to note that we be blokes. Smelly older blokes. You don't get many lady engineers, so it has to be something where when we get there they don't think we're a stag party and throw us out. Attempting to appear sophisticated is also out (we're engineers).

Tubetastic Thursday: Russian roulette

Before I get to the usual Thursday guff, I must say woo! yay! to Facebook.

Yes, I'm still sceptical to it's uses (eg tried the poker, and you can buy fake chips that have no value with real money? How whack is that!), but on the other hand have caught up with a few peeps I've not seen in years. We even be thinking of having a class of '96 meet up. Well, the survivors who are local anyways.

A chance to find out who's gone bald, got kids, and to prove that none of us can dance still... Just as long as Phil is still frying chickens at Alton towers so I'm not totally last in the life success stakes.....

Tubetastic thursday.
I bring to you: Rihanna - russian roulette.


Ok, so I swore back in the day I'd never forgive her for the bloody umbrella song where it rained in real life for a billion days. As soon is it finally dropped off radio play out came the sun. But this be a catchy sort of tune. In fact at times it verges on earworm.

Other factettes n observations:

Uk radio play of this song cuts the final gunshot. Why, I don't know.

You have a 1 in 6 chance of taking a bullet in 'Nam if you try this at home kids. Which works out at about 50:50 if you have four goes and give the gun a spin each time. Plz to not check the statistics of this empirically.

Derrin Brown did a russian roulette based tv stunt thing. Yes, I was hoping it would go a soupcon wrong. I don't want him dead, but would settle for maimed enough that he no longer gets on tv. Which is rather odd as I don't watch tv anyways.

Rihanna is rather good at doing the wearing minimalistic clothing thing.

The following public service announcement

is brought to you in part by Slim Shady our evil overlords.

Announcement begins:

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker! Bloggers can register for to play for free in the WBCOOP, if you don’t have a PokerStars account you can get your Poker Download here.

Registration code: 904446

Announcement ends...
There, I've admitted I'm a bad gambler. No doubt I'll be punished for it one day.

Tubetastic Thursday: Weekend!

They say when God closes a door he opens a window. I haven't a clue what use that actually is, unless you're a cat and like jumping thru windows?

I'm going to have a moan. I shall do it now:
My ISP have force migrated my email to google. They pimp it as being, no lie "New and shiny". That's the exact words used.

It is a load of shash. "You don't have to do anything, except wait for the shiny". it says. Oh yeah?

So.... now you can't send hardly any mail attachments. Ah.. that's useful.
And
You can only download mail once. So check mail on your phone, and then you can't get it on your pooter as well. Not like people use multiple devices these days is it? And it's Shiny! Woo! Arse!

Moan ends.

****************

I am now going to attempt an experiment. See if I can alienate approximately half the population, and attract the rest.

I bring to you:
Scooter - Weekend!



Just in case you haven't worked out the attraction it is thus: Bossoms.

There are actually several versions of this video, with varying levels of Bossoms. I have one on my pooter that is really quite overflowing, so they have also added snow to make it more arty. Snow = art, not porn if you didn't know.

Pointless additional fact for those not interested in Bossoms:
"Respect to the men in the ice cream van" refers of course to the KLF.

Fixed.. and broken

Yesterday, after only a five week wait I finally had my nanocom delivered. This be a magic box to remove the three amigos from my landrover.

Slight snag... it no work until you register it with the nice people in Italy. Who ignore your registration attempts as they're no doubt doing more exciting things like spend my money.

But today I finally got it registered, and blam! Amigos be gone. So I hope you enjoyed the snow, as now I have a working 4x4 there won't be any more.

Of course, as I've fixed something that's wrong, something else in my life must be broken. It's the turn of email. The muppets at virgin have "migrated" to shiny new google powered email. That's dead wonderful*.

Shame it turns out you only get one chance to read your mail, so if you read it on your phone that's the only copy, despite having "leave messages on server" turned on. Getting nowhere fast with support who appear to be going down the path that the solution is to read on the phone, then forward it back to yourself?

And relax.

*complete and utter shash.

99.... 100

This be post 100. Rather surprising considering I wasn't expecting to get to 10.

Sadly I've been thinking for about a week now, must have something exciting for post 100.. what's happening today? Oh. snow. cold. wet. bored.

Nothing has changed , so methinks post 100 is "still alive, plz to standby".

To prove sanity, I give you:
James last - This is my song



What do you mean insanity more like? My collection of singing potatoes tell me I'm totally sane.

New year. Old Idiot.

Or idiot girl fails to learn.

A test:
You have a (one) crusty bread roll, and you want to cut it in half. Do you

a) place on a bread board, and keeping your fingers out of the way of the knife carefully cut thru it?
or
b) Hold it in your right hand. Take your sharpest knife and hack at it brutally with your left hand?

Need a clue? Idiot Girl selected option b).

This may be why we got a phone call saying there is a cut of unknown depth on my finger that is redecorating my kitchen in a fetching shade of red and please fetch a bandage ~thud~

(~thud~ be where she passes out on the floor).
We arrive to find said thudee being ignored by the dog, so so much for all that lassie comes to the rescue shash.

Sadly no photos as I got the evil eye when I got my phone out, despite pretending it was just in case I had to call 999, and the thought of getting a quick pic to blog about didn't even begin to Cross my mind, honest. ~cough~

Say goodbye to 2009

and hello to 2010.

Yes, the year number has changed, but the quality crap blogging you've come to expect is still the same.

I've just been stood outside at minus 2 degrees, while detritus from other people's fireworks falls around me. That would have made a good new year, clonk, ow!

I wish you all the best of luck for 2010 (the year we make contact?)

I will not be making any resolutions, wishes, predictions as I don't do that sort of thing any more due to being completely shit at it.

Xmas countdown: Teh End

I'm sure my 1/2 a reader will be glad it's all over.

So without further ado:
Christmas Party



Top trumps time:

Number of xmas cd's featured on: not on cd anywhere.
Probability of being played on asda in store fm: minus infinity.
Relationship to xmas? : It's a xmas song.

I may get a buzz,
'cos mistletoe's poisionous,
oh hell I don't care I think I'll die.

This is a cover (prolly better than the original version actually) of a dead milkmen song from the time when the dead milkmen where a "fictional" band, and their albums came on tape with each one having a hand drawn cover by the band.

Of course thanks to the power of the interweb you can now obtain such rare material rather easily in mp3 format.

This is from "Oh no! Somebody shot sunshine!"


If you're really that interested you can hear the original here:

	The Dead Milkmen - Christmas Party .mp3
	Found at bee mp3 search engine

Ps.. Merry Christmas...

Xmas countdown V Tubetastic Thursday - grudgematch

There was some whining about credit cards and how awful they are when you have to phone mr. Patel in India and pay for the privilege here, but it was soooo boring, even by my standards, so it's gone now....

Time for a double bill....

Xmas countdown:
Sesame Street - Counting the days



Top trumps time:

Number of xmas cd's featured on: one!
Probability of being played on asda in store fm: -2.6%
Relationship to xmas? : Weapon to keep the kids quiet with.

Having odd tastes in muzzax, I quite like obtaining doo wop "zero hit wonder" cd's. I got a xmas one, and this was on it... Freaky stuff eh?

Tubetastic Thursday:
The Cars - Drive



There be a slight xmas message in this one for all you crazy kids who go out on the pop.

"Who's going to drive you home tonight?"

No drink driving now. Or getting in strange cars with strange men. Or phoning me to come and rescue you. Thank you and good night.

Xmas countdown : Son of the xmas countdown

Season of goodwill? My arse!

Went to the hellhole that is asda. Coming out some little bastard shouts at me "cut your hair and get a job".

Now in an ideal world, I would be like the terminator and quickly choose an appropriate response:

Choices:
Ignore.
Kick child.
"There is no Santa".
"I have a job. F***ing your Mum"
"F**k you asshole".

Sadly I'm not very good at the human thing and spent too long thinking about it, and only managed a half hearted "F**k you". ~sigh~


More lazy blogging:
Band Aid - Do they know it's Christmas?



Top trumps time:

Number of xmas cd's featured on: all of them.
Number of xmas words in the lyrics: 1
Number of winter / snow etc words: 1
Probability of being played on asda in store fm: 87.9%
Relationship to xmas? : More related to Geldof's ego. Midge Ure hardly gets a look in.

Well tonight thank God it's them instead of you.

This has bugger all to do with Xmas. It was a method for extracting cash much the same as the local brass band playing and rattling tins outside tescos. You're supposed to give them money and pretend you care, feel good about yourself and then a few weeks later forget they exist.

But the artists, record companies etc did it all for nowt and helped the poor people... Oh yeah? And the record labels haven't made it back 10 times over in royalties for the song appearing on every bloody xmas compilation album, playing on the radio etc.... They only handed over the dosh from the single sales.

The truth is, we're really not remotely interested in helping the 3rd world. The 1st world is already using more than the planet can provide, so even if it was possible to instantly "upgrade" them to our standards it wouldn't be done.

Perhaps the Macc Lads had the truth with their "alternative" version of this song:
Feed your face, don't give them a second thought.

Rant ends....

Xmas countdown: revenge of the xmas countdown

Well, the doom begins. The usual xmas deluge of fools who bought an item from me on ebay AFTER last day for xmas posting to their country, and now want to know why they've not got it yet. Only one man from France so far, and he was only 1 day late in buying so may still get it, but I'm sure Thursday will see me with head in hands screaming "Make them stop".

But enough of this self pity. More lazy blogging:
Jona Lewie - Stop the cavalry



Top trumps time:

Number of xmas cd's featured on: 72
Number of xmas words in the lyrics: 1
Number of winter / snow etc words: 1
Probability of being played on asda in store fm: 37%
Relationship to xmas? : Vague.

Wish I was at home for Christmas.

Methinks this has not actually got a lot to do with xmas, and more to do with war...

Video appears to be set in WW1 trenches / no man's land. N a lot of the typical cannon fodder "tommies" signed up for the war with the idea that it would be a bit of adventure / bash the hun / finish the war in time for christmas.

Or is it just me?

Xmas countdown: part deux

It snowed today. And as I live on a hill, this can be entertaining.

You see, stupid people live further down the hill from me. Very stupid people. The road bends to the left, and it's moderately steep. Right on the apex of the bend, 2 cars parked on each side of the road. Which makes a gap in the middle of 1 car + 18 inches. The road is covered with snow... can you see the problem yet kids?

So the skittles have been set up, all there is to do is wait and watch for someone scoring a strike. How many cars will they damage? I should also point out you can go down our street to the council depot, so there's lots of vans driven by people who don't give a sh*t.

Sadly, there was no score today. One council van did look a good contender by a) going too fast & b) braking so the van is now going sideways on towards the target. Fortunately for him his brain kicked in, and he stopped braking, van goes back to straight again and he managed to steer his way thru with about three inches to spare.

Also had to drive to Idiot Girl's to "put up a picture". Yes, drive only if you have to, or if your sister wants to change her decor. No drama for me even if my land rover is in limp home mode. Entertaining following a very shiny BMW that wasn't going remotely where the driver was pointing it.

Thinks...... Ah: Jackie Wilson - reet petite



Top trumps time:

Number of xmas cd's featured on: 1
Number of xmas words in the lyrics: 0
Number of winter / snow etc words: 0
Probability of being played on asda in store fm: 2%
Relationship to xmas? : Bugger all.

Reet petite the finest girl you ever want to meet.

So what's the xmas connection?
Christmas number 1 single for 1986, and most of December too if memory is working. One of my favourite xmas songs actually...

Xmas countdown

Bit of a joy / despair / despair/ slightly less despair day today.

Joy: My new credit card was finally delivered.

Despair: After activating it, and them trying to sell me insurance against it being cloned (wot, like it just has been you mean?) I took it to the shop. Where it failed to work.

Despair: Attempting to start car: clunk. Bugger new battery required. Hang on.. the headlights are still bright... tries again, starts first time.... Bugger.. new starter motor required.

Slightly less despair: Googled discovery td5 starter motor, and they're apparently crap and fail a lot. But you can get a kit of replacement bits to fix them for £10, so slightly happier as this is cheaper than a battery at £130.

I haz also had a genius, GENIUS idea I tell you, on how to blog lazily in the run up to xmas when idiots will suddenly decide to do their xmas shopping online at my emporium and drive me insane running around after them.

The idea be: Youtube vids to the max. With a twist on the xmas theme. Yes, I hope to have enough ideas of xmas things to show, that when you actually stop and think for a soupcon, they're not remotely xmas-y.

I will start this plan NOW: Freiheit - Keeping The Dream Alive



Top trumps time:

Number of xmas cd's featured on: 5
Number of xmas words in the lyrics: 0
Number of winter / snow etc words: 0
Probability of being played on asda in store fm: 15%
Relationship to xmas? : Bugger all.

The game will never be over
Because we're keeping the dream alive

I'm baffled why this is a Christmas song. Anyone got any ideas?

And they'd have got away with it if it wasn't for those darn kids!

I am, so I'm told, the intended recipient of a package. Which contains $700,000 in cash. (must be a bit heavy).

But the silly sausages forgot to pay enough to cover the weight of all those greenbacks, so I must pay $315 and 29 cents within the next 2 days, or it will be sent back!

Quite why the nice lady at fedex currier company can't just take a bit out of the money in the box, I'm not sure. They could even get some donuts, on me! They must be stupid or something...

Perhaps that's why they spell courier as currier. Unless it works by a chain of fast food shops delivering your money slowly in a max 5 mile radius with free onion bhajis?

Voyage to trip out city

Well, sort of. A bit. Maybe.

I have been given by the vets some new antihistamines, as standard over the counter stuff works for about 2 hours and then stops, and taking 6 in a day is slightly more than "1 a day" like it says on the box. I'm also told "drowsy effect", which considering I've not been spleeping could well be a positive point.

So last night, itch, scratch, not tired.... I know, try one out.

Goes to bed, still not tired but resigned to singing the infinite bottles of beer on the wall song. Then came the strange things.

I can hear something. But in my head, not in reality. It's like listening to a numbers station. This goes on for a bit. It then changes to Jeremy Clarkson talking gibberish. No, not the rubbish he often spouts, but actual strings of nonsense words, that I sort of understand. Then there are a sequence of chords, that are not so groovy. Then I start to feel tired / dulled, so write down the above so I'd not forget (I have some great blogging ideas that are lost by the next day).

The pills are bright blue coloured... Oh.. matrix-y.. Perhaps I should ask if they've got any red ones and wake up?