Month: December 2008

Yep – every year, we have a big one for our office and there’s others too 🙂

About 50-60 people at this one. Big project 🙂

“SPIRIT” of the Holiday….lol! Oh this one finger typing….!

So this is an Annual Happening? How many people get together for this special Xmas Meal? I hope you don’t get into too much trouble….After all, it is ALL in The Pririt Of The Holiday…Yes?

Xmas meal out for the project today, which means everyone dressing up and descending on one of the city centre restuarants.

Well, almost everyone. There’s usually a few missing, whether it be due to being busy, rationing out the parties they go to or just plain shy … But there’s always enough of us to have a fun meal out with enough going on to make it a good idea for us to think about finding a different place to go the next year 🙂

Today’s post will almost certainly get me in trouble 🙂 🙂 🙂 But then getting into trouble with people is one of the things I’m good at … I’ll be in trouble with a couple of people tomorrow anyway, one for this post and the other for not letting her pay for a drink ! I have a simple rule, if a person goes to a lot of trouble to organise something like today’s project Xmas meal, then I’ll do what I can to make sure they get at least one drink 🙂 And our Boss does an excellent job of subtly but firmly keeping everyone organised.

That’s the plan at least. Asking The Boss “what are you having?” turned into a “I’ll have a coke, here’s some cash and I’m going to need the change for the car park.” Hmm. Not quite what I had in mind but I knew I could work a little subterfuge there :-). So off I toddle, grab a couple of cokes (I don’t drink much alcohol, 1 pint of Seahawk was enough for me) and come back. Boss gets her coke but instead of the expected change being £20 minus Drinks, it was the full £20 broken up a bit 🙂 And me scarpering back to my table before The Boss has a chance to count the change. Muahaha – subterfuge completed, The Boss not paying for that drink, plus The Boss gets a useful bit of change or the car park. Meant I had to get another round in later to get some change for the bus home but that’s no hardship.

Who’s the other person I’m going to be in trouble with ? Enter the Snow Queen.

I got in this morning to see our favourite Pixie (aka IT Girl) about to head outside. The outfit today was something special, a resplendent white coat matched with white scarf. This was complemented perfectly by our Snow Queen’s dark hair, cut specially (although typically bloke-like, I never realised until hit over the head with it), with the hair framing our Pixie’s ever-present smile. So a new nickname for our Snow Queen 🙂

Description above is what’s really going to get me in trouble tomorrow 🙂 But it’s much deserved (the trouble or the compliments?). Missed seeing our Wild Thing there today and there was no Miss Perky (new one for da cast list!) at the meal either.

More postings later in the week, if I survive the poking I’ll get tomorrow.

PS I may also be in trouble for using the line “Beauty before Age” on someone who was feeling slightly guilty for getting the attention of the barman before me. Another project person but someone who I haven’t figured out a fun name for yet … True saying though – she’s far prettier than I ever have been, plus everyone knows a lady never gets older than 21. Which makes me 13 years older.

You know those annoying breaks you get in the middle of stuff you’re trying to watch ? That you always fast forward through ?

I’ve been getting bugged lately by someone claiming to come from Israel …

They want to sell advertising on people’s websites. Somehow, they’ve found this blog and they’re trying to get me to sign up to them. The email today is a guilt-trip one, where they’re saying I didn’t get back to them the last time. Darn straight ! No way am I going to sign up for someone to infest this blog with the advertising that is a bane of so many people’s lives !

Reasons :

You lose control over what’s on the site you’re responsible for. 3rd party content seems to be (info from forums) the most common means by which identity theft trojans and other nasties get on to a system. Displaying any link means you’re obliged to make sure that link is safe for other people to click on. Delegating the control of that link to a third party means you no longer have the ability to protect your readers from malware.

I have removed sites from my blogroll in the past because I could no longer support what they linked to. In the case of the Mercs website, that was removed because the webmaster was unable or unwilling to implement what was necessary to prevent it being spammed to death by malware and porn people. So it got unceremoniously dumped off the link list.

I don’t need the money. Offering up for advertising is like selling your soul. You lose the total editorial control over what gets posted because of the segment you have delegated to the advert people. I don’t find that acceptable for this blog. I will point people towards various bits n bobs I’ve liked but that’s my choice. As soon as the advert people get in, you lose that choice, possibly finding yourself plugging stuff that you know is absolute rubbish.

I like what’s left of my soul, I’m not interested in selling any part of it.

Trust. This is the big one. I’ve had 2 emails recently from people wanting to affect the content of this blog, one is a blatant advert person with the other wanting to collect links. Nuff said about the advert person, however the link collector is slightly different. My hit counter (it collects more info, hidden behind a password) tells me the link collector comes from a South African hosting company, yet he claims to come from Israel. Sorry mate, that instantly flags up BOT, which is where I instantly flag up I’M IGNORING YOU.

Loading time. Not so big a point in the Broadband age but still a good one. When I was an active participant in Michele’s Meet & Greet, I’d look at sites, wait a moment for them to load. If they took too long (and I have a decent connection), I’d say byebye and never look at them again. Long loading times is a big turn off. And adverts only serve to lengthen load times, the worst ones seem to demand to load before the rest of the page becomes visible (Register and Cricinfo were terrible for this, which was one big reason why I went hunting for adblockers)

Anyway – gotta get ready to go out for some more gaming now, so I’ll cut short the rant on adverts and go for another advert myself 🙂

Our gaming group has been steadily getting to grips with the latest incarnation of Dungeons & Dragons, which has been heavily simplified in its 4th edition. Lots of interesting changes, where they’ve made the characters a lot more “generic” instead of in 3rd and 3.5ed where there was more in it for the Power Gaming Munchkins than the role players. Ok, we don’t do hard core roleplay in our groups, we’re more interested in bashing monsters. However, whereas in 3rd and 3.5ed the rules kinda got in the way, 4th ed rules seem to be a lot smoother.

I like it – and our group is playing well with them too. A change for the better ? 🙂

PS When I get back tonight, I’ll update this post with a link to the Flashblock and AdblockPlus post I did a while ago. Say no to adverts by banning all influence they may have from your browsing influence.

I get the feeling that my immune system likes to round up the bugs and put them up against the wall for shooting …

Not had a day off sick for ages 🙂 (well – nosejob accounted for a few and there’s a day or so when I stopped eating) I seem to avoid the worst bugs, even though I’m still around people who have to go off sick with bugs.

Sounds painful! Hope you feel less achy soon and most of all avoid all the nasty bugs going round at the moment!

(quick warning – techie post ! scan down a little if you find yourself getting lost 🙂

As well as trolling forums and peeking at everybody’s blogs, I’m usually logged into MSN Messenger with me being available if people want to ask something.

(it’s a different address to the one on my blogger profile – and I may be tempted to give it out to the right people 😉 just drop me a line)

Seeing weird things on MSN at the moment though, it’ll all of a sudden go up to almost 100% cpu usage. It’ll then stay at 100% cpu for 46 minutes … and then release the cpu back to idle again. Strange ! I first noticed it a few months ago, which had me hunting forums and Google to find out why. The ideas seemed to be around people who use special characters in their online name or in their message. The special characters would cause the Messenger program to have difficulty decoding what they were, which would lead to excessive cpu usage.

The cpu usage is no big deal, except that the laptop answers by ratcheting up the speed on its fans, which kinda gets in the way of listening to music via iTunes. It’s not done it for a while but started again yesterday, with MS’s WinXP updates coming at the same time probably being a coincidence. So that’s 46 minutes of cpu burning, with another hour or so a bit later. Similar tonight, 46 minutes (exactly!) of burn, with another 44 minutes a bit later. Weird.

I’ve tried a few things, my contacts list has been pruned for one. I think I hit about 35 contacts at one point, mostly due to World of Warcraft people. It’s down to 25 now and could probably come down further. I’ve run the A-Patch too, which I’d recommend for anyone who runs MSN Messenger. It allows you to safely modify the registry settings that control Messenger’s behaviour, to do things like cut the adverts out.

Haven’t got any answers on this one – Messenger is definitely doing something … and it’s a task that takes the Athlon XP-M2500+ in my laptop about 45 minutes to carry out.

That’s the end of the techie stuff 🙂

Healthwise, after Monday’s fun I’ve been having the reversal … Stiff back, dodgy ankles, shoulder cramps, knees that drown out the telly with their creaking and hips that are more statue than snake. I’ve learned to enjoy the good days as much as possible and to ride out the bad as best I can. It helps to have great people around, a shared smile and a kind word really brightens the day, which goes a long way towards me being able to ignore the aches and pain. And we have some great people on the project I work on. The move across site has been good too and the canteen girls seem to be catchng the grin too 🙂

But I do miss the “Hello Pete how was your weekend?” that I got occasionally from the wonderful Miss A. I tried to tempt Miss A to come visit to steal a cake when I brought them in to work for my birthday (project tradition) but I don’t think Angel Slices were tempting enough to brave the rain for 🙂

I don’t think I’m magic but I reckon I fit the other two bits there at the moment … Although the dragon bit is only through my “Another Monday” Pocket Dragon avatar that follows me around the net. Definitely been puffing due to burning off excess energy.

Better than average day today for me. I’m usually carrying at least two niggles that slow me down. From leg injuries that never healed, a stiff back or a shoulder that feels like someone’s got a vicelike grip with their fingers digging in. Today it was my leg’s turn, a legacy of a knee injury making it kinda like dragging one leg. Noticeable but ignorable …

Walking around, I felt like I had an extra gear to kick into. Bit like having a metabolism that’s figured out that it is ok for it to do some hyperactive bouncing off the walls. It’s fun when it happens and I try and enjoy it while it does. I walk faster than most people anyway but having the freedom in my legs to open that stride up and Go Even Fasta gives quite a buzz. It’s a bit like the first day of a new cricket season when you go onto the field and really pin those ears back with the open space giving room to let you break into a sprint. It’s great feeling the wind rush past your ears.

I’m nowhere near being an endurance runner but managed to build up a fair bit of sprinting muscle so I can literally run like the wind when I get the excuse. But only for about 50 yards, which is when the rapid stop, keeling over and coughing part takes over 🙂 (I’m not quite that bad but rather too much of my 14 stone is deadweight).

Felt so good today that I had one of those mad moments while dashing to the chippie and back 🙂 Not full speed sprinting (too dangerous on wet pavements and trainer soles I don’t trust) but easy paced quick jogging and maintaining it apart from being wary of psychotic Bristolian drivers. Doing a fairly regular dash around the block is something I should do a lot more often. Even if I don’t play cricket that much more, it would help to get rid of some of that deadweight which would keep me feeling better all round. And cos jogging isn’t really impact like some of the sports I like, it should keep the shoulder happy too.

Just gotta get into a habit of being healthier, which means not being lazy and running to the chippie to avoid doing the washing up.

I’ve never been diagnosed but I think I’m a bit on the manic-depressive side. It doesn’t affect my personality much (that I notice) but it does affect the about of energy I can kick out. Some days I’ll have great trouble doing anything, others I’ll be bouncing off the walls. I enjoy the bouncing off the walls days when I get them and attempt to ignore the depressive effects as much as possible.

The thought “you won’t catch up to those pretty people up ahead on the path if you keep whinging” has been very effective in the past at starting to kick me out of the low cycle 🙂 One of my other contrasts is I can be a bit of a show-off alongside shyness and showing off doesn’t work too well if you’re depressed.

Last note – spooky iTunes moment – it’s caught the tone of this post and offered up Alive and Kicking by Simple Minds. (Youtube link) I just hope DM Aginoth isn’t intending to do a “Show Me Heaven” (Maria McKee) to my D&D character tonight … He hasn’t killed one of us off yet and it’s getting due …

Yeah – fear is something we have to be really careful of, or it starts to take control …

I’m glad when I had my nose broke that I managed to play another game that year – that let me get rid of any psychological hangups that might have developed 🙂