I have been lax…

… in updating this blog, but I have been rather busy, what with the move into the new flat, work, and maintaining my social life to some degree!

Anyway, here’s a brief summary (brief not because I don’t have much to summarise, but because I don’t have much time to summarise in!) of what I’ve been up to!

• First off, I’ve moved up a ranking in my Geek levels – I’m now part of a Dungeons and Dragons group. I’m not running the group, but I’m an integral part of it. D&D is much more fun than I thought it’d be, and game nights are light on adding-up scores, and heavy on laughs, which is the way it should be I feel. Probably because I’m terrible with numbers.
• The Onion Girl and I have decided to host a Halloween party, which will be fancy dress (as it should be!), and will be our first “proper” party in the flat – or Castle Roonula as it’s described on the Facebook invites I sent. Onion Girl’s getting very excited, especially on Saturday when we bought the first few bits for the party, and started discussing costumes. The only annoying thing about this party is that we have to keep it secret from my family, or else my sister will demand to be invited (or just simply turn up on the night) and in all likelihood ruin the night for everyone else (I’ll blog more about this growing problem another time).
• Completed Halo 3: ODST in about 6 hours, on the day of release. Go me!

More when I get the time!

TTFN

Silencing FAIL!

As the more technically inclined amongst you (read as: geeky) may have noticed, Twitter was down late last week, and Facebook was disrupted. At first it was assumed that the two events were unrelated. After all, Facebook is almost constantly under some form of attack from would-be hackers, and Twitter seems to get hacked into about once a week. The only reason people really took any notice is because this time, rather than a celebrity suddenly tweeting nonsense, the hack resulted in the collapse of the whole Twitter service. Anyway, soon enough, the disruptions were over, and we could all happily resume telling the world the things they never really needed to know about our mundane day-to-day lives.

However, it’s since been revealed that the attacks were perpetrated by forces within Russia. And they were all directed at a specific person – a chap going by the name of Cyxymu – who is an outspoken critic of Russia (especially since their five-day war with his homeland of Georgia last year). Apparently , these forces (thought to be acting on order from the Kremlin) figured that they’d be able to disrupt two of the most popular web sites in the world, and attack the biggest (Google) without it occasioning comment. They also didn;t seem to think that these websites would talk to each other, or the press about these simultaneous attacks.

However, since they’re not stupid, talk these organisations did. And now the whole western world knows (or could know if they weren’t too ignorant/lazy to find out) what happened, and why it happened. And Cyxymu has become a trending topic on Twitter, become super-popular on Facebook, and his blog has achieved worldwide exposure. The exact opposite of what these mysterious Russian hackers intended.

So, for you, you poor misguided Rusky hackers I have one word; FAIL!

Soundtrack to my week (thus far)

• The Tears – Robots In Disguise
• I Never Told You What I Do for a Living – My Chemical Romance
• I Will Kill Again – Jarvis Cocker
• Shakermaker – Oasis
• Positively 4th Street - Bob Dylan
• Waiting Game (acoustic) – The Cooper Temple Clause

P-p-p-power tools!

Ahem. I’ve been given my first power tool! This is a special occassion, and one that is only usually experienced by men, or a certain type of woman. Being entrusted with your very own powered tool is something akin to having a child. Well, ok, it’s nothing like that. It’s much more fun, but you get the idea!

I’ve been given a Black and Decker Jig-saw that belonged to my Grandad. Since he’s passed away, my Nan has been looking to mover house, and so has started clearing out the house. This includes the stupendously large collection of tools my Grandad accrued over the 70+ years of his life. Most of them were cleared out by a charity (an act which caused much outrage among the family, since the sons of the departed had all been promised first pick of the tools when he shuffled off), but some remain in the garage, mostly in an old, hand-built woodworker tool chest. My Dad and I were sent to investigate and move it yesterday, and discovered the jig-saw hiding within. Since my Old Man has one already, and my Nan has no use for it, she gave it to moi! Now all I need to do is find something to saw…

TTFN

Moved in… and a rant.

As those of you following my Twitter will probably already know, I’m now moved in with the Onion Girl. last Monday was a nightmare of boxes, furniture, tiny stairwells, and overloaded vans. It took us a little over twelve hours to complete the moving of our posessions from our previous abodes to our current, and left me absolutely knackered (since as predicted, I had to do most of the lifting/carrying!). Monday night our flat was just a mass of boxes and bags. we just managed to squeeze onto the sofa to eat our dinner of roast potatoes and toast (the only food we had), and then squirmed our way over to the bed and collapsed.

Since then we’ve actually done pretty well. There are only about five or six small boxes left unpacked, and they mostly contain stuff that was under beds or in lofts (attics to you Yanks) before now, so isn’t really needed and can wait a li’l while to see the light of day! But the amount of stuff we have… I wouldn’t have thought that two people could so comprehensively fill a flat as soon as they moved in! We both own so much stuff (Onion Girl with her DVD’s, me with my books and CD’s). I’ll upload pictures later tonight (if I remember), and you can marvel at the sheer volume of stuff shoehorned into our little flat.

Aside from the unpacking, most other things are going well – except for out Virgin Medi services, and our washing machine. I’ll start with the washing machine, since the other leads nicely into my rant for the day… Our washing machine worked fine on the second day of our tenancy, washing a full load of our clothes with no problems. However, when I put in a load on Friday, it blew the power to the whole flat. So, Sunday I replaced the fuse, and we tried again. Once again, fifteen or so minutes into the wash, it tripper the power again. We resolved to leave it, and see about getting it repaired/replaced.

Then last night Onion Girl called me into the kitchen, and showed me the source of the problem. As she’d opened on of the cupboard doors, the was a large scorch mark up the inside of it – right where the power cable for the washing machine has been crudely extended and covered with electrical tape! So poorly has it been joined, that the damn connection overheats and shorts out the machine, and scorches the wood of the door! So I now have to contact the estate agent and get them to send someone ’round to fix this lethal cabling!

The second problem is our Virgin Media. They’re supposed to be providing us with landline telephone and broadband internet. It was all set up Friday afternoon, and at first the internet worked fine. We didn’t check the phone line, as we didn’t have a phone at the time. However, Saturday there was no internet, and no phone. Then the internet came back for about ten minutes Saturday night. Then failed again until Sunday night. The phone remained dead throughout. So, I looked to call them. However, from my mobile, calls to their customer services are chargeable. After much cussing, I went to my parents, and used their Virgin landline to call, have a little rant about the poor service, and get an engineer sent out to repair it. He’s allegedly coming today (although the internet has been working since Sunday night), and woe betide Virgin if the bloody phone isn’t working when I get home tonight…!

And then I read this story on the Times website, the gist of which is that the Government in their infinite wisdom, want to charge every house with a fixed landline and additional £6 per annum tax on that line, in order to pay that money to BT and Virgin Media to extend their broadband coverage and give every house in the UK at least 2mbps broadband by 2012. Laudable goals, but why the hell should I be forced to pay for it? I pay for my phone line. I pay VAT on my phone line. I pay for my broadband. I pay VAT on my broadband. So, I’m not only already paying for broadband and line rental, I’m also paying a tax on both of them. And now they want me to pay another tax on them? Because other people don’t have broadband, but might want it? WTF?!?!

Does this mean that they will start charging all Porsche owners an additional owners tax because I don’t have a Porsche, but I want one? Of course not, it’s a fething ridiculous idea. And yet it’s been put forward in a official government White Paper.

I live in an area which has Virgin Media’s “super fast” optical cables laid down. I made sure we could access their services before we decided to move into our flat, because Onion Girl and I are both big ‘net users, and would benefit from their “super fast” broadband speeds. So surely if others want “super fast” broadband, then they should choose their home accordingly. If you want to download movies in minutes, then don’t move into a tiny village in the arse-end of the Cotswalds! It’s common bloody sense, surely! And if you do want to live in that tiny village, then expect to pay through the nose for faster connection speeds. It’s all swings and roundabouts. I live in an urban area, which has an infrastructure capable of supporting “super fast” broadband. However, I don’t have two acres of land to frolic in. Hell, I don’t even have a balcony! But no-one’s going to pay for me to get a garden are they? Nope. Lack of open space is one of the burdens of living in an urbanised area. Lack of fibre optic cable for your broadband is one of the burdens of living out in the countryside. DEAL WITH IT!

Ahem. Anyway, back to work…

TTFN.

Boxes.

Boxes. That is what my life seems to consist of at the moment. Boxes, and the act of putting stuff into them. At present, in various areas of my parents house, my wordly goods and possessions are stacked up in cardboard boxes, awaiting the arrival of a large Transit van to carry them all away to a li’l apartment the other side of town. Not because I’m donating everything I own to someone in a flat across town, but because I’m finally moving. Well, I will be on Monday anyway!

I’m feeling somewhat mixed emotions regarding this move – trepidation. Excitement. Stress (not really an emotion, but c’est la vie). But mostly a sense of foreboding. Not at the prospect of living with the Onion Girl – which is something I am wholeheartedly looking forward to! – but at the prospect of moving all these bloody boxes! Onion Girl (as anyone who knows her will tell you) is far from the biggest person in the world. In fact, she is nigh-on Hobbit height (which makes certain intimate things interesting since I’m 6′2″). But unlike those old Spanish ladies, who despite being only knee-high to a Hamster can carry a small Iberian villa ontheir backs without breaking a sweat, Onion Girl is a bit useless at carrying stuff. She struggles with a shopping basket in Asda!

Which basically means I’m going to be moving everything. The sofa. The bed. The bookcases. The TV. The boxes! And since I’m only just recovering from the pulled and twisted muscles I suffered filling the boxes and moving them around my house, I think Monday night could be a time of suffering and pain for me! And worst of all, I might not be able to come on here a whinge to you, my faithful internet friends, since we may not even have an internet connection! That’s the one thing I wanted sorted before we moved in (well, along with electricity obviously). I was willing to wait a few days for the gas, even the water, to be turned on. But I wanted my internet connection, since both the Onion and I are heavy, heavy internet users. But despite my best efforts, they can’t even get started on establishing the internet services until the current resident (due to be vacating tomorrow) cancels her services!

But fear not! Those of you who cannot bear to be deprived of my insightful drivel can still get your fix! I can twitter and Facebook from my phone. So if you’ve got Twitter (and if you haven’t why the Hell not?), follow Rooneythewaster. I’m not going to give you my Facebook, ’cause I dont want all you weirdo’s adding me on there. Well, apart from the weirdo’s that already have (hello NerdGirlTalking ).

So, more updates nearer the time, because I’ve just been called by a business type, who seems to want to talk Turkey.

TTFN

That time again….

Yes folks, it’s that time again – it’s my birthday tomorrow! And strangely considering last years melancholic gloom surrounding May 29th, this year I’m feeling terribly nonchalant about it! ALthough this is probably because I have a lot of good things going on right now which are distracting me from the sands of time slipping eternally through my fingers.

First and foremost amongst those good things is that I am finally moving out of my Parent’s house! It’s taken over a quarter of a century, but finally I’m doing it! Aimee and I have gotten ourselves a flat on the town, and are moving into it on the 15th June, which is filling both of us with a sort of slow-burning excitement, punctuated by stupid grinning when we sign paperwork and the like.  We did our first “Grown-up house thing” on saturday; we bought a little coffee table. Felt very strange to be buying furniture for our own house, rather than something to be crammed into my shoebox bedroom.

Next on the list of good things is my birthday celebration which is taking place on Saturday – we’re going paintballing! Finally, I’ve made good on my promises to organise a paintball outing, and got all the people that I’ve always wanted to shoot/yell orders at to agree to come! If things go well, we’re looking at starting our own team (out of the 25+ people going we should be able to rustle up half a dozen of us willing to keep playing), which will mean I will actually have a sport that I play. So expect a blog about bruises and pulled muscles when next I write!

I was going to expound upon an altercation between my boss and I yesterday over the phone, but every time I thing about it I get angry again at his petty-minded stupidity, so I won’t go into it. Suffice to say there is going to be a meeting regarding my alleged “lack of teamwork” and “lack of pro-activity”. I shall probably write it all up here once the meeting is done. I can almost guarantee I’ll need somewhere to vent…

Anyway, I have work to do, and my lunch is over.

TTFN

Make sure you’ve READ my blog before commenting.

I don’t get that many comments – a lot of the people that regularly read my blog are too damn lazy to sign up to WordPress for an account, and so they reserve any comments on my latest ramblings until the next time they see me. However, in amongst the obvious scams and ads that I find in my comments, there are a large number of people telling me what an arse I am, or how stupid I am. I have no problem with people holding this view. After all, I know they’re obviously wrong, but far be it from me to discourage their efforts at joinging the Human Race. However, I do make one stipulation on people railing against my opinions;

MAKE SURE YOU’VE ACTUALLY READ AN UNDERSTOOD WHAT I’VE written!

It annoys me know end when someone has the effrontery to insult me when they’ve not even grasped what I was saying, or have only skimmed the post and gone off half-cocked. So to all you people that think the Teachers were right to violate the terms of my employment contract, or think that I was wrong to get annoyed by the stupidity of HGfL, before you tell me what a naughty little man I am, re-read the post, and make sure you actually know what I am talking about. Hell, why not go the whole hog and make sure you know what you are talking about!

TTFN

Shifting Mediums

There’s a debate currently raging across the internet, and in the boardrooms and staff cafeterias of newspapers worldwide. It all centres around the dwindling circulation (and therefore profit) of the newspaper. And what are they debating? Well, those in the boardrooms with investments ( or employment) in the newspapers are debating ways to save the newspaper. On forums and blogs across the web, they’re debating whether it should be saved.

This debate piqued my interest because – as mentioned in one of my previous entries – I don’t read the paper any more. This is because my family insist on buying one that is little more then a comic with a semi-nude girl on page three (don’t get me wrong, I like naked ladies – but the newspaper offends me!). So, for the last few months I have been getting my daily blurb of news solely from online sources – Previous to that I was supplementing the little news given in the aforementioned comic buy looking online – and I’ve discovered this is infinitely better than the old style printed wad of paper that drops onto my door mat every morning! And why is it so much better? Well I’m glad you asked…

• You choose what news you want to read. If I’m browsing the Times website on FA Cup Final day,  I don’t lose half the space normally allocated to real news because it’s been given over to talking about an overpaid sportsman. I can read about the latest developments ion science and technology, or the latest theatre reviews, or the latest developments in Iraq, or whatever. I’m not force-fed pap about another celebrity taking Cocaine, and what her aunt’s hairdresser has to say about it!
• If a story interests me, I am mere keystrokes away from reading more about it. I’m on the internet, possibly the largest collection of Human knowledge ever. I can read more on the subject from an academic point of view, then get different opinions from multiple sources (this without consulting the endless flow of blogs on almost every subject!). I’m not confined to the half-page story somewhere in the middle of the paper.
• I can get the news as it’s happening, not fourteen or so hours later when the paper is finally delivered to me
• It’s free (or at least a lot cheaper). For the limited information and applications of a newspaper, I’d pay between 20p and £1 per day, which over the course of a week is between £1.40 and £7. Which over the course of a year is between £72.80 and £364. My internet connection costs me £15 a month. And it doesn’t just give me a handful of select, biased news reports every day. It gives me full, unfettered access to the whole damn internet.

So, you’ve probably realised which side of the debate I come down on. I think it’s time the newspaper industry embraced the shift in available mediums. Thirty years ago, the printed newspaper was indespensible. It was the best, most cost effective way to disseminate news to the masses. but thirty years ago VHS was the best way to watch film. But you don’t settle down to watch Quantum of Solace on a Saturday night on your VHS player – we use our DVD and Blu-Ray players. You don’t use a horse and cart to get to work, because that’s what you have a car for. And you can put away your abacus too…

Why should the newspaper be saved? With other mediums, and in other markets, out-dated technology and mediums have been allowed to fade away, and the people using those obsolete formats embraced the new ones. And nowadays, everyone’s racing to be greener than thou. Well, if how many trees are mulched up every day to make the paper that these newspapers are printed on? And don’t give me all that rubbish about the electricity running my laptop – these people would be using their PC’s or TV’s anyway, whilst reading their paper!

So, should the ailing newspaper be saved? Or should it be retired like the cassette tape?

*Yawn*

Do you know what’s really annoying? So annoying as to be on par with nails dragged down a chalkboard, or a screaming child when you’re stuck in a queue in an overly hot bank? Sleepless nights.

Last night (in what has become something of a theme over the last few months), I lay down to sleep, feeling thoroughly tired. Tired enought to drift off to sleep within minutes of my head hitting eiderdown. But of course, that didn’t happen. I wouldn’t be writing a blog with a headache if that had happened. N0, what actually happened was that I lay there in the dark, eyes closed, and mind racing. There were no particularly big thoughts that deprived me of my sleep, just a myriad of little ones, the sort that are completely unimportant at 1am on a Tuesday morning.

It seems to be that lately the only times I can get to sleep in a short period of time are when I’m either drunk, or sharing the bed with Aimee. Theoretically, this lack of sleeping won’t be a problem for me once the two of us move in together in the next few months, but at the moment it’s killing me! More than one person has commented on how rough I look, and asked what I got up to the night before. They didn’t seem to believe me when I said nothing but a film and a bit of internet Geekery (is that a word? It should be). I wouldn’t mind if I’d been out partying until the early hours, but recently I haven’t had the cash to do that, so weeknights I’m usually in be d before midnight!

And I know what you’re thinking “Well there’s your problem – go to bed earlier”. I’ve tried that, and all it means is that I spend longer laying in the dark with my mind clacking away irreverently.

*Yawn*

In other news, this Thursday I’m attending a fancyh dress (insect theme…) party at Aimee’s place (I have Friday off work! Huzzah!). But far from the debauched student party you might expect, this will be an altogether more… genteel affair. So genteel in fact that I fear I may nod off. You see, even thought it’s this girls 21st, Aimee’s housemates in their naivety have decided that the best way to celebrate this momentous occassion is with a birthday party. You know, the type you had when you were five. Yes, jelly, ice-cream, pass-the-parcel, a pinata… This would all be jolly good fun, if there were people who know how to have fun, some booze, and plenty of good tunes. However, this is Aimee’s housemates we’re talking about. There will be about a dozen of us (four of them being the residents of the house), most of whom will not know the others, just enough alcohol to say that this was an adult party and proove we’re not actually children, and the music… well, it’ll most probably be handled by a girl who claims she’s Welsh (despite being born and raised in Stoke-on-Trent), has a penchant for Star Trek, and believes that Meat Loaf is heavy metal – and the greatest musician ever. Or by the other girl who listens to the Hairspray soundtrack on a regular basis.

The more I describe this party, the worse it sounds… perhaps Onion Girl and I can closet ourselves away in her room with the house supply of booze and have our own party? Either that or I fear I’ll drown myself in Aimee’s (extremely) alcoholic punch – which is one of the few bright spots in this grim evening.

TTFN