Year: 2009

Just wanted to say hi. I hope all is going well for you. (October 13th)

It's great that you like your work. Most/all of my co-workers are fake and/or rude. I will be so glad when I no longer have to work there….unsure when that will be. You are lucky.

🙂

Lol – that's probably a reflection of my brain at the moment – for parts of this post, I didn't have a clue what I was writing about ! 🙂

Thanks so much for coming by and leaving such a nice comment! I dearly appreciate it!

I haven't a clue to any of what you are writing about, but what I get is…You Are Having A WONDERFUL Time! I'm very happy for you!

I think I scared a few people on Saturday.

We went karting …

I’m involved on and off in 2 of the big online games, Eve Online and World of Warcraft. I’ve hopefully kicked the World of Warcraft addiction now but the Eve people keep drawing me back in to that game. An online game is made far better if there’s good people around and I’ve been lucky to have been involved in a few of the better groups. Warcraft had the Mercs while that lasted and then later the Violence Reborn people :-). Eve has the Volition Cult people, with the Volition Cult being an alliance in that game that’s now lasted 3 years.

The karting was part of our 3rd anniversary meet up :-). We went to a place called M4 Karting, not too far away from where most of the UK part of the alliance is based and indeed only 30 minutes from where it was born. Good track this one, housed in what used to be a hardened aircraft shelter attached to the nearby airfield. The circuit itself was twisty and nicely technical, with a good consistent surface. Some karting tracks suffer from bumps, grooves or even things like wooden floors instead of smoothed tarmac … I had great fun powersliding round all the fast corners 🙂

Oh – this track also had a She Who Must Be Obeyed running the show. Most definitely In Charge, although they had one or two techie hitches with the timing gear. Will certainly go back there, we had a lot of fun at that track with plenty of stuff going on to keep us bantering on the Volt forums afterwards.

Will have to check out Radio Control cars some more too as this place had a shop selling them, which is getting rarer and rarer nowadays. It helps to know what you’re looking at when thinking about buying things though, especially if it’s a specialist market …

I don’t think I scared people on the karting track though, I’m a bit too heavy still for that. The scary was on the trip to the pub afterwards :-). The satnav I use tends to be a little “aggressive” on the roads it chooses … Let’s just say that you wouldn’t want to take a lorry down the same routes. And I got to the pub about 10 minutes before anyone else 🙂

I’m looking forward to next week at the moment, it’ll let me get recharged on “Calm” after a week that I’m still detoxing from 🙂

Wednesday – 13 hour day trippin’ down to Portsmouth for some performance testing. Cue the “testing diet” … aka strong black coffee + biscuits. Keeps you awake but the caffeine does weird things to you.
Thursday – coming back from Portsmouth and hoping that Orange Light Of Impending Engine Doom goes off … Yep, had another scare from that one starting on Wednesday. Also watched the film Creation after having pizza with the Crazies 🙂
Friday – easy night (needed it!)
Saturday – karting with the Volt boys, followed by trying to munch a pub dinner with hands that were insisting on cramping up …
(ow)

I’ve been needing a bit of chill out time anyway and I reckon that as that gets closer, you slow down and feel the tiredness even more. So come Monday, I’ll be looking to think as little as possible of work although I’ll be missing having the chance to natter with and tease a few of the people I work with.

There’s a few people who make where I work far more entertaining than it could be, from the ever wonderful Snow Queen, The Boss with her empathy, Wild Thing teasing me about the Little Canteen Girl, Ms Sunshine’s continual readiness to burst out with a room illuminating smile and cheerful laughter and the diminutive Miss M who’s been taking advantage of my techie talents lately (while being bemused by my efforts to have my way with a devious plan for the file system).

We’re also blessed with fun people in our finance section (an area I deal with a fair bit lately). We keep an eye on what the project is spending, which means painstaking attention to detail on admin. But that’s made into fun by our Finance Girls 🙂 They’ve been recruiting too, with someone recently arriving who’s shadow betrays her invisible Angel’s wings. I also get on very healthily with my actual boss, although healthy in that respect also includes us setting each other off in the mornings when one of us gives in to Munchie Cravings. There’s also El Diablo, a fellow gamer and sci fi nut who is the one who pointed me towards the Jack Campbell books. And we have more too that I’d mention except imagination failure means I don’t have Blog-Safe codenames for them.

Great bunch of people, I’ll miss them next week while I’m off work 🙂 But after putting this refresher week off for a few, I’m really feeling the need for it now.

Right – I’ve nattered for far too long … so long my feet have started to freeze. Time to sign off and shut those curtains for the first time this year …

Hmmm … Cakes with a "Made By Snow Queen" are irresistable 🙂

Well…you are sweet, although you undersell yourself! And you eat my cakes too! Perhaps the S and K should have been somthing with a C instead?
Snow Queen!

I missed the Jets game ! There was one hell of a good game on between England and South Africa at the same time and it had 110% of my attention.

I wasn't even fidgeting to not look at the telly while it was on … that's how exciting it was 🙂

good job cutie 🙂

what I love the most is how honest and genuine you are

Meme time 🙂 Or should that be Me Me Meme ?

I’ve been stealing ideas again, this time it’s from my neighbour Cyberkitten. He hasn’t got round to doing his yet though. Right – this one could be a long one, here goes 🙂

A for Allrounder. For the cricket, I’d be able to do everything 🙂 I’d have seasons where I’d open the batting and seasons where I’d be a main bowler, although it always seemed like I’d be good at one and not the other. I could bowl spin as well as swing and seam. For the indoor side, I was most effective keeping wicket. And as long as I stayed reasonably close (and was awake!), I could terrify batsmen with sharp fielding.

B for BBC B. I’ve always been a computer person and it was Acorn’s BBC B Microcomputer which started it all off when I was 5. Learned a lot from this special machine.

C for Cricket. Although I don’t play any more (mebbe next year ?) the cricket still dominates. Hoping that England continue their amazing form (amazing cos it’s a surprise ?) in the ICC Champions Trophy.

D for Dwagons. I like Dragons, of the various mythical beasts out there, these are the most majestic. You don’t mess with dragons. That’s dragons with an R though, Dwagons with a W is for my avatars. I’ve been using Pocket Dragon (link) avatars for quite a few years now. Big shame they’re not still being made.

E for Evil Overlord. Much of my misspent youth was spent going for strategy games. Lots of mental exercise in subjugating those poor defenceless Bit Creatures. I tended to be a bit more Builder though than Evil Overlord.

F for Fragile. I have to admit, I’m rather fragile. I carry various long term disabling injuries from my ankles all the way up to my neck with sore shins, bad knees, groin trouble, back trouble and shoulder trouble in between. Some days are better than others.

G for Gamer Geek. Definitely a Gamer, definitely a Geek 🙂 I take things apart with my eyes without touching them, I can usually figure out how they work before resorting to invasive methods (translation, without taking them apart). Definite engineer (also see N below). I also get quite a bit of fun out of the weekly gaming sessions 🙂

H for Hunter. As my Facebook page says, “Incorrigible Hunter of pizzas, teacakes and muffins.”

I for Injuries. I’m usually carrying at least 2 and there’s usually another that’s waiting in the dark looking to jump out and surprise me.

J for Jokes. Always on the lookout for jokes and for trying to make people laugh, although my humour is more reactive than scripted.

K for Kind. I think I am. I’m not overly generous but I like to help people out where I can.

L for Lonely. No relationship for a while, Facebook helps keep me sane as well as the occasional dabbling in online games. I know some amazing people too, like the Snow Queen, The Boss, Ms Sunshine and the Crazies. But I do miss being able to share things with another person.

M for Music. I suspect that a music addiction has replaced my gaming addiction … When I’m not watching telly I’m almost certainly listening to music 🙂 All sorts, from Enya to Iron Maiden with a lot of pop in there too. Lene Marlin coming up on the iTunes shuffle.

N for Nutter. Note of Warning : Keep Sleepypete away from caffeine. I’ll usually go for the unorthodox solution where I can, purely because the unorthodox is more interesting.

O for Omnivore. I’ll eat anything, although I prefer simple, traditional and doesn’t run away when you chase it with a fork (like Spaghetti).

P for PIZZA !!!!!! (see H)

Q for Quiet. I’ll usually go by a Yorkshire motto : “See all, Hear all, Say nowt.” Quiet people can pick up all sorts of gossip, although my quietness is usually down to struggling to turn rapid thoughts into slower speech.

R for Round. Hey ! Round is a shape too. Perhaps not as good a shape for a person as one more chiselled but it’ll do for me for now.

S for Sweet. This one’s from our Snow Queen 🙂 Usually after I’ve said something related to K above, although it’s rare that my words form an adequate description.

T for Toys. I don’t go out of my way to get all of the latest toys but I definitely appreciate a well crafted toy. That’d be toys in terms of gadgets that fit their function without too much fanfare and without too much awkwardness. Most important with that “awkwardness” bit, as however fancy a toy is, if it’s nasty to use it gets put to one side.

U for Unrelenting. (See Evil Overlord). Could also be used to describe what I can be like when I’m going at a task. Especially a task I’m not too interested in doing so that I can get it out the way quicker.

V for Vampire. When I broke my nose playing cricket, a few weeks later I had an operation to have it straightened so I could breathe better. A side effect of the operation was Vampiric Eyes 🙂 Literally blood red eyes that lasted for a few weeks. You can probably imagine how much fun I had with this, especially as a number of people on the project were rather squeamish 🙂 🙂 🙂

W for Warcraft. Took over my life for rather a long time this did. I think the addiction is fairly well kicked now, hopefully I’ll be able to resist getting the next expansion. I have to say there were a lot of good times with the bad but I’m glad I managed to escape a game that has a tendency to consume and twist those who get too deeply involved with it.

X for eXcitable. Ok, that’s cheating but I don’t play the Xylophone. I can quite happily go hyperactive, especially when there’s caffeine involved 🙂

Y for Young looking. One of my favourite games is Guess The Age. People always guess low 🙂 Will be playing this one again in 6 weeks when I bring in the cakes for my birthday.

Z for Zoom. Live fast, play fast. Run fast too. My bowling wasn’t the quickest but due to building up lots of leg muscles from a paper round, I can run Real Fast. For a short distance and then the coughing, spluttering and wheezing kick in.

So there we have the A to Z 🙂