Finally!

After several weeks (maybe even months) of desk preparation, I finally have a finished surface where I've been able to permanently set up my new iMac (yep the one from mid-March). It's a wonderful thing. I can finally take this blogging thing a bit more seriously - in the loosest sense of the word.

"Why has it taken you so long to paint a friggin desk?". Well, dear reader, that is a long and tortuous story, filled with intrigue, despair, several cans of wasted paint and hair. Not my hair, roller hair. A family member gave me some roller sleeves (he's a decorator) and said they would give a great finish, but every time they just deteriorated whilst being use, thereby ruined the finish and contaminated the paint. It's still a bit shit in my opinion. Well not as great as I was aiming for is probably a bit more fair. It looks awesome until you get close enough to see/feel the fibres under the surface...

Still, we can finally use our spare room! And set up all our IT goodness! And tidy up all our other stuff (booooo)!

Oh and in other news....

A girl in work asked if I could replace her iPhone screen after the miraculous job I performed on mine. I agreed but when I opened it, a connector actually fell out of the phone. Totally not my fault, but now the bloody ear piece won't work.

Screen is perfect tho! ;)

Unfortunately while trying to repair the unforeseen problem, I killed my own iPhone. Proper DEAD. No screen activity, no sound, no iTunes recognition, nothin'. I only opened it to see exactly where the connector had originally sat. Have no idea how I killed it, but I did. At least I only have to wait a month (or two!) until the next iPhone rolls along... not that I needed an excuse to upgrade :D

Other than that, some tit called Chloe a "sensless [sic] bitch" and a skank and told her that she should "fuck off and die" on Facebook. Yeh, I've posted. But I've not threatened the prick yet, so I'm showing progression with my anger control issues! Yay go me! And thank you random knobber for testing my resolve! And Chloe, just cos I haven't planned to rip out his throat with my teeth, it doesn't mean I love you any less! xxxxxx ;)

However, he IS working at the Chester Races 5th - 7th May.............................. ;)

I wanna KICK-ASS!!!!!

Just got back from watching Kick-Ass and, o m g I so wanna go get suited up and get out there and right some wrongs!!!

What an outstanding film. Not without flaws, but they are paled by the sheer awesomeness that is the rest of it. As a confessed geek, I know that so many people (just like me) have at one point (or maybe many points) stood in front of a mirror, busting moves worthy of taking down super-villains. Just like Dave (the eponymous Kick Ass). And therein lies the genius of this film that assures it's place in the Geekdom Hall of Fame - there is so much in those 105 minutes that comic fans and superhero lovers can relate to. OK so I have yet to don a wetsuit and get stabbed in the gut, but the dream is there!!! (??!?)

Which makes you think, or at least it makes ME think. What if. Not like "what if I dressed up and went vigilante style on some crims". What if people didn't turn the other cheek. This is what drives Dave to the lengths he goes to; when people get mugged and others see but pretend not too. When people get beaten but the passerby fails to step in. Hell, even when someone falls over and no one offers a hand. What if. What if the third party spoke up? What if the twenty people watching someone getting beaten all stepped in? The three guys laying into the guy on the ground sure as hell wouldn't hang around.

The film also answers this to a certain extent - we're all too afraid to lose what we have, be that by humiliation, injury or (god forbid) death. Which is understandable. The problem is that by doing nothing we DO lose something - a piece of our humanity, our society and even our self-respect.

When Dave faces the above situation, he utters a couple of lines which I wish everyone on this planet could take into their hearts and believe in. When asked if he would die for this guy that he doesn't even know he replies "three assholes, laying it in one guy while everyone else watches? And you wanna know what's wrong with me?!!? Yeah, I'd rather die... so bring it on!"

Unfortunately in the real world where our souls have already been devalued by modern life, losing a small part of our humanity can be more appealing than losing everything else. I'm not preaching - I'm the same.

Well, maybe just a little different.

Craptastic!

I'm working hard (no really, I am) on a project which will provide a new expense forecasting model for my department. It's going well - I've just shown my manager my last two weeks work on it and he's pleased enough. We've discussed some tweaks and changes and I'm primed and ready to get them in; hand scrawled paper notes and all... Start writing some SQL, move to Excel to grab some data, then jus... BAM! "Cannot clear clipboard". WTF? I only need four rows of data. Ok, I'll just go back to the code and move a few pieces arou... Hang on, ctrl-x isn't working... Nor ctrl-c... Why is Cut, Copy and Paste disabled on my edit menu?? Ok, well I'll just save everything as is, reboot (a pain in itself since this shitty company-laptop takes 15 mins to boot) then come back and pic... FFS now File, Save isn't working... In ANYTHING. Start Menu has just given up... Oh fuck it. *holds down power button and loses an hours work*

You don't get this shit on a Mac (I've transcended to "fanboi").

OMG! Just Cause 2!!!!

I never played the original Just Cause. I'd heard how average it was from pretty much everyone, so I couldn't be bothered picking it up - even as a rental. Then out of nowhere it's sequal came out (ok, maybe not "nowhere" - Sweden or something I believe). Whereas the original had been plagued by reviews themed around it's mediocrity, everything I read about JC2 focussed on how fun it is.

And that's a very important point. It's very fun. It's got more than it's fair share of issues - both minor and major and I can't decide which catagory somethings sit in. For example, no movement while crouched? Am I missing something? This guy is supposed to be a top grade secret agent who can leap from moving vehicle rooftop to moving vehicle rooftop, but he can't duck while walking?!???!? But it IS fucking good fun! Here's an example that I still can't quite believe; I finished my first mission and I spotted a helicopter. "Sweet, I'll have some fun with that". So I dive in and only after taking off do I realise it has no guns. Rather than ditch it, I land next to a nearby statue of the local dictator and attach my winch to it's head and the other end to my chopper. At this point I'm just planning on seeing if I can tear the statue down, which it turns out I can. What I didn't count on was the head staying connected and my sudden realisation that I now had a make-shift wreckingball on my 'copter! So then I'm blitzing around smashing water towers with this dictator's stone noggin when his soldiers turn up in their own (heavily armed) whirly birds. In a truly inspired James Bond-esque moment, I swing round and manage to take two of them out with my wildly swinging rock bonce just as they manage to turn my transport into a firey ball of death. I bail out, hit the 'chute and land right next to one of the bikes their ground support had abandoned, which I then commandeer before making my escape into the countryside.

And this was only within my first hour of play. Hope it keeps up!

New Shiney Thing

My new iMac has arrived! Technically you could argue that it arrived a week ago, but that one got sent back as it suffered from the dreaded "Yellow Tinge of Doom"...

Anyways this one appears to be perfect and (as much as I hate the fact I'm about to sound uber-geeky) I have to say, it's absolutely gorgeous! 27" of glorious i7 quad-core powered goodness. Added Windows 7 as a bootcamp partition too and it's half decent at playing games - well the games I want to play on it and not on my Xbox at least.

Just got to finish painting my desk so I can set it up properly now......

Also managed to fix my iPhone after it's screen-shattering experience (glass splinters in the ear is NOT much fun).
Luckily, £30 on eBay can go a long way! It's pretty scary how relieved I found myself after I finished - not relieved that I didn't fuck it up further (though there WAS a certain amount of that obviously) but that I could use my phone properly again. I knew I relied on it lots for my emails and stuff, especially so whilst I've been waiting for a new Mac, but I didn't realise how much I now take Internet access for granted. I lub yoooooo interwebs!!!!!

Err... hello?

Sometimes life gives you lemons, sometimes it's oranges. Right now, it's kumquats.

What I mean, is that life is OK. Many people (if anyone ever finds this!) would read that as a negative ("Well life is OK, I suppose"), but for me it's a really positive progression from where I was not too long ago.

Depression, family deaths, debt, health issues... but let's not dwell. Cos, hey, life is A-O-K.

So I have the occasional down spot - two days in a month of negativity is a lot better than the inverse that I previously experienced. I miss my grandads, but I have some lovely memories (and still laugh when thinking about one of them in particular). I owe some (well, quite a bit of) money to banks - but I'll clear it eventually. And I may have high blood pressure but I'm alive.

And...

I have Chloe - who loves me (as I love her) very much. I have my family, who are supportive and amazing. I have a few awesome friends, who are as diverse as they are true (you know who you are). I have Neko - my ace Oriental cat who just wants to play and cuddle. I have a decently paid job, where I work with people that I have a laugh with. I have a nice apartment, a decent car, plenty of gadgets and gizmos to keep me occupied and a whole raft of diverse creativeness I'm beginning to explore.

Hmmmm.... maybe it IS oranges...