Ain't no sunshine...

The clouds are rolling in and we're heading for a grey and wet (not in a nice way) bank holiday. Bah. Despite the temperature struggling to get into the mid-teens, there are some truly horrendous sites on the streets and concrete shopping precincts of northern England. People in vests and with their legs and toes showing. Jesus.

I have been deserted! So, in spite of the weather, I'm taking advantage of the long weekend and I'm off to Norfolkland later to see if I can contract bird flu from that chicken farm. I'll let you know how I get on.

Do wood pigeons get bird flu? I fucking hope so. Stupid bloody creatures. They can't even walk without having to move their heads.

Oh, the sun's come out again, I must undress to a indecent state and prop my sunglasses on top of my head! QUICK!!! Open all the windows, it's too hot!

Aresholes. Should move them to somewhere properly hot (like Delhi).


Torture
I might see if I can make a recording of a particular person to post on here. How do I make this thing work? Hrrm, it's a pity she's concentrating and is engaged in conversation with only herself, rather than the rest of the people in the 1km radius of the building. She's "tiddly-pomping" though - perhaps she's been to choir practice recently and is having flashbacks. Plaid A-line skirt (above the knee!), short-sleeved white blouse, pink tank top, glasses (those ones that make your eyes look HUGE) on a string around her neck.

Their PC died last week. It's not a great problem because everything is stored on the server and you just get a replacement PC, log on, and all is fine with the world. Theirs was replaced with an exact same model, but she is constantly telling people who phone up that "I'll get it off his 'electronic', but we're using a spare computer and it's very slow". G-O-D!!!!! By "his electronic" she's referring to her boss's Outlook diary, as opposed to the paper diary, which she also insists on keeping just so as she can confuse people. "Hello, yes! Hiya - heh heh heh - yessssssss... I was just wondering whether, you see this is where it all gets rather confusing, whether you could check Mr Whatsisname's electronic over at your end to see if it's the same as the electronic at our end because it's different in the paper diary. OOOOOOOOOOOOHHHH!! So his electronic is the same wherever you look at it??? Well, yes, yes, that's right, that's what I thought, well you see - PARADOXICALLY, it's all rather worked out for the better then".

I've just enlightened her with "ctrl c" and "ctrl v" because she "can't find the copy and paste buttons on this stupid computer". And now somebody else has made her day with the concept of right clicking. Jesus, I can't believe that people are allowed anywhere near computers without basic training.

Fuck me.


Blog award
You know, some woman has won some blog award for being homeless and writing from inside her car. Well, perhaps if we all had that amount of free time and peace and quiet, we too might be able to write something worthy of a fucking award!


Subway
Does anybody know what shite goes into a Subway sandwich? I can't believe they have the cheek to advertise themselves as fresh: shoving a load of highly processed shite into bread in front of a customer does not constitute fresh. And that stench that they pump on onto the streets should have them being taking to task by the environmental health. Dis-fuckin-gusting!


Hometime
Is it hometime yet?

Eye, eye!

Stereo vision is really good. You kind of get used to having two eyes from quite an early age. As a child, you do that thing where you open each of your eyes individually so as you can see the difference between the two fields of vision. You remark at the "Oooooh, intit weird, that?" feeling.

Anyway, I can't see properly out of my right eye this morning. This is because a) I need new glasses, b) I'm too tired and it doesn't want to focus yet , or c) a combination of the two.

New specs next month methinks. Watch this space.


Out
I was out with some lesbians last night. They were all telling me how it's so obvious that I'm gay. That's nice of them, it's a bit like saying that it's really obvious that I have curly hair, small feet and blue (red) eyes. There are plenty of things that I could point out to people, but I don't because it would be impolite. I mean, I could quite easily say things like: "I knew within ten seconds of meeting you that you're a total cunt", but it's not the done thing.


Animals in the road
On the journey here this morning, the motorway warning signs were telling us to slow down to 40mph because of animals in the road. All the motorists did too. I didn't get to see which animals were in the road, or whether there were any that were soaking into the tarmac because I left the motorway before reaching the hazard, however, it occurred to me how compliant the motorists were. I'm not sure whether this was through shared concern about the welfare of the animals in question, or through fear of vehicle damaging through collision with a sheep, but I wondered whether the motorists' willingness to slow down was dependent on the hazard? For example:

• "Slow down, FOG" - nobody slows down because fog doesn't hurt if you hit it
• "Slow down, SPRAY" - go faster so you can get through the poor visibility and maybe even get your car washed
• "Slow down, ACCIDENT" - go faster to get to the scene and have a nosy before they clear up the carnage
• "Slow down, QUEUE" - go faster because you're going to get held up when you reach the queue anyway
  

Fucking hell, it's started
Just heard Posh Scouse having a chat with Mental Scouse about something that always rears its ugly head at this time of year - the ambient temperature reaching levels above 10°C. Posh Scouse has traumas about it being way too hot as soon as we approach May every bloody year. It starts as soon as she gets into the office in the morning and she lets her colleagues know about the which windows have been opened and other measures that have been taken in order to keep the air circulating in the stifling heat.

It's freezing, for fuck's sake!

She's wearing flip-flops. FLIP-FLOPS! Jesus fucking Christ all fucking MIGHTY, get a grip!!!!

Another colleague has just rolled up with her sunglasses propped on top of her head. They'll stay there all day while she's sat at her desk. Why don't they wear their sunglasses in winter when the sun is low in the sky? Is it part of the summer uniform, or a simply a fashion faux pas for the winter months?

Tossers.

I can't do that with my sunglasses. My head is too big for a start, but they also get caught up in my hair. I think I'm still hosting the remnants of a pair that got lost in there a couple of years ago.

Full of shit

My guts have been rotten today. I'm having flashbacks to my Muller Vitality probiotic yoghurt addiction; a time when I felt constantly bloated, with my colon on the verge of exploding. My, those are tasty yoghurts and I love 'em.... but they don't like me!

In fact, with the adverse effect those probiotic things had on me, it makes you wonder how the lying bastard advertising agencies have the gall to claim that they "make you feel healthy inside". I'm sorry, but if you put a load of live bugs into your digestive system - one that's already populated with plenty of its own - you're bound to get some sort of fermentation thing going on. We all know that fermentation produced lots of gas and heat and when that's mixed with the contents of your bowels, you get: EGGY PLAPPERS.

...and horrendous guts ache

...and bloatedness

Lying bastards. "Oh dear, Marjorie, you're looking a little out of sorts today, whatever is wrong?"

"Well, Jean, I'm suffering from abdominal bloating - look!"

"Oh dear, yes you are. And here's me thinking you were just a fat fucking crank! But have you tried these bug drinks and yoghurts?"

"No. Do they work?"

"Yes, they work wonders if you want to constantly feel like you're about to shit your pants and you can't move for fear of doing huge farts!"

And another thing!

When I'm being pursued downstairs at high speed by eager NHS employees, the employees in question are often nurses who are dashing to get to their shift with 30 seconds to spare. I, on the other hand, get to my desk 45 minutes early and so can pootle (daudle/dawdle) merrily along.

Nurses, they're so hard done to. I've noticed that all the nurses in Base 1 are now wearing brand new fleece jackets, emblazoned with the organisation's logo. I'm not sure, but I'm betting they get these free as part of their uniform (I could be wrong). Wouldn't it be nice if the rest of the workforce got their clothes paid for as well? We essentially wear a "uniform" - clothes that are for work and no other purpose - yet we don't get any allowance for this and we're probably on comparable salaries to the nursing staff.

But anyway, the nurses do work hard - most of them: some of them are lazy twats who are always on sick or maternity leave and who just add to the stress of their colleagues. You get people like that across the professions, but the impact can be worse on nurses.

I love the workplace; it provides a means of social interaction, gossip, stimulation, productivity. Of course, the main stimulation comes from too much caffeine and the productivity is purely related to how much of your Christmas shopping you can do while using the free internet access. The past two days have been VERY boring because, had I wanted to do some work, I wouldn't have been able to because the main server died and nobody could access any of their data. Two whole days lost. So much for storing all your data on the server.

But the time was filled with the usual office banter related to:

• My new relationship
• Colleagues who we dislike
• People leaving
• People on maternity leave
• People (women, never men) being off because their children are sick or are having a special assembly
  
• Shopping
• Fashion/handbags/shoes
  
• The next social event (and who to exclude from it)
  
• The order for the water fountain being delayed

The last point is one that gets right on my tits. There's a bottled water dispenser in the kitchen and people don't half go on when it runs out and the next delivery is delayed. I point out that there's plenty of perfectly good water in the tap. I also point out that it's a privilege and not a right and that coffee, tea, milk and MY POP isn't provided free, so why should bottled water be?

Fucking whinging bastards.

And in this post I have, on Convict's request, pointed out some of the reasons why the National Health Service is in a right old mess. Namely:

1. Wasting money on unnecessary workwear - fleece jackets for nurses? I can understand this sort of provision for people who need to work outdoors, but why provide coats for people who work indoors?
2. Workforce costs. Most of the expenditure in the NHS goes on the workforce. A lot of this is wasted on sick leave and recruitment costs after people leave because they've had enough. People are generally demotivated because they've been continually shafted by the system. Other are fed up of carrying their colleagues who are always fucking off to have babies, or taking time off to look after sick kids.
3. Lack of productivity due to lack of motivation - most of the people who work in the NHS have recently gone through a pay review ("Agenda for Change") and a high proportion of those people have been well and truly shafted, right up to the fur. Why should they be productive when their salaries have been frozen? Why should people be productive when they find themselves shuffling meaningless bits of paperwork and jumping through hoops for politicians instead of doing the job that they want to do? How can you expect people to be productive when the infrastructure is vulnerable hardware failure? One bit of hardware dies and two servers are out of action for two days, but there's no backup, so people can't do their work. TSK!

So, next time you go to your hospital and get the treatment that you need (if you get it), just remember that the people involved in that are probably really, incredibly and completely fucked off.

And this has done nothing to alleviate my guilt for doing fuck all at work these past two days.

Gets me down

I park in a multistorey car park at Base 1. It's a lovely car park - almost a joy to park there. Staff members have to park on the upper levels so this means that I either have to take the lift or the stairs to get out in the morning (and to return to my car in the afternoon). Only lazy cunts use the lift (esp to go down) so I always take the stairs.

How fucking annoying is it when you're essentially being chased down the stairs by somebody going way too fast for 7.15am? It gets right on my tits. Stop fucking harrassing people who need to go at a particular and unwavering pace in order that they don't get vertigo from the stripiness of the steps! It's not as if I daudle, for goodness sake; I just descend the stairs at a normal pace that wouldn't induce a nosebleed in your average curly-haired NHS employee.

Tossers.

And then you get harrassed as you drive out of the car park at the end of the day. Is it really necessary (or indeed wise) to drive over 40mph in a multistorey car park? Clearly if you drive a Jaguar and look like one of the extras from Prisoner Cell Block H. Stupid twat.

Some people are just maniacs.


Chester Zoo in pet blow-up dolls scandal!
Just look at the filth they're peddling in the corner of the gift shop at "Zoological Gardens, Chester". Dirty, dirty bastards.

Otto was shocked and appalled.

Sniffy days out: 22nd-23rd April 2006

Ahhh, spring is well and truly sprung and all is good in Sniffyland. Well, nearly all is good, but it's not worth bothering about the crap.


At the zoo
The problem with public places is that they attract members of the public, most of whom are utter shitforbrains, inbred, scumbags. There could've been no animals worth mention at the zoo yesterday, but I'd have still be fully entertained by the selection of lowlife that could somehow read a map and operate a car sufficiently to get themselves there.

As usual, the footpaths were overrun with chav mums and dads, pushing the hugest pushchairs, occupied by the ugliest, noisiest screaming little fucking whingebags on the planet. They walk three and four-abreast in order to ensure that they take up the entire width of the footpath; they look surpised and shocked when normal, proper people try to pass them without being forced onto the muddy grass verges. Fucking twats.

I was particularly thrilled when a group of teenagers and their pierced and scriking offspring stopped next to where we having our sarnies in order to smoke loads of fags and be really common.

There were some additional delightful examples of scumbag parenting in the beer garden of the pub where we'd hoped to find sanctuary from the whinging little bastards and their horrible parents (perhaps "breeders" is a more appropriate word).

Never mind, it was a lovely day out with Bomb and my girl-friend (makes me smile and go a bit funny to think about it).

What is there not to smile about?

Things I learned there:

• Bat poo is green and it gets everwhere
  
• You can get married at the zoo
• Termites are brilliant!

• Chimps are great

• Penguins are impossible to photograph underwater

• Lions are very lazy, as are jaguars

• Elephants seem quite happy

• Tigers get really annoyed with little kids who stand and growl at them

• Red pandas are smaller than I expected them to be and they never stop washing themselves

• There shouldn't really be any zoos, animals should be left to live in their own natural environments. Unfortunately, if we did that, there'd be none of them left.

All in all, I had a lovely day out.


St George's Day
It's St George's Day today - he's the patron saint of England. Legend has it that George slayed a dragon or something. Anyway, to all you lot flying flags of St George and wearing roses, English flag deeley-boppers, England tops and shit? You look fucking ridiculous!

The English aren't like the Scots, Irish and the Welsh, we don't need to be all nationalistic like them, but this St George's Day business is creeping in because of a perceived favouritism towards the smaller nations of the UK by the Scottish-dominated government.

Anyway, they were out in droves in Manchester as me and Jo had a wander about this afternoon. Nobheads.

It was sunny in town today. The sun makes you feel funny and you do stuff that perhaps you wouldn't do normally. You end up finding yourself taking photos of the city...

Fun, fun, fun!

I've decided that I love Base 2a again! After the despair of the firewall being reset and losing both Firefox AND Blogger access on the same day, today I find that they have come back to me. So here I am with a big fat YAY!

Things are looking up for Sniffy: I got my new phone yesterday and it looks OK - quite dinky, lots of features. Fair enough, it's a bit toy-like and not as sturdy as some Nokias I've had, but IT'S A NOKIA and it means that I can finally get rid of the shiting awful Samsung.

Of course, when you get a new phone, you have to do all sorts of things like transfer your contacts from your old phone, change the settings so that it doesn't default to Nokia Tune for the ringtone, that sort of thing. But this is usually a nice activity; it is essentially playtime with your new toy and you spend a bit of time messing about and having a few "Oooooh, look at that!" moments.

Of course my enjoyment was stopped dead in its tracks because I was dealing with the Samsung. But why? Well, there's a slight problem in that you can't copy the contacts from the phone to the SIM memory - an activity that would allow the transfer of contacts to the new phone by copying the SIM contacts to the new phone's memory.

It just doesn't allow it...

.....at all....

......under any circumstances.

I even tried screaming at it and it still wouldn't do it. So what do you do instead?
You have to bluetooth each individual contact. I've just spent the last hour doing this. I am now well fucked off.

Fucking

Pile

of

SHITE

Lesson learnt: stick to Nokia. No doubt the new one will piss me off too, and ergonomically, the Samsung is nicer, but it is a shite to use and I can't wait to be exorcised of it.

One good thing about the Samsung was the way the predictive text always gave you "bomb" when you keyed in "anna".


Other stuff: going to the zoo
This time of year marks the start of Sniffy's days out and I'm kicking off with the Zoo on Saturday. CAN'T WAIT!!!! Bomb is coming with me and my lovely love interest. They'll be meeting for the first time. Love interest has already said how much she likes Bomb. Bomb may get left in the tiger enclosure if there's any trouble.


Traffic
Even I am alarmed by my use of foul language when when people piss me off while I'm stuck in traffic. But not many of my outbursts actually make sense. It'd be quite good fun to ask foreign students of English to translate what I say. It'd be quite good fun to ask English-speaking people* to translate what I say because I haven't got a friggin' clue! All I know is that my mind goes sort of blank and I reach the end of my journey with a sore throat.

*I wonder if Vauxhall drivers know what is meant by: "USE YOUR FUCKING INDICATORS!" They're all tossers**.

**There are some exceptions, but not many.


Typing
I don't like listening to other people as they type, it irritates me. The worst type of typist is the type who really hammers the keys. Does my bloody head in, so it does. But what makes things even worse is when people wear bangles that bang on the desk as the hammer away at the keyboard. There is simply no need for this.

Bangles + typing = WRONG!

I'm loving my new phone. I will never forsake Nokia for another ever again!


Congratulations!
Many congratulations to Tom Cruise for his blatant abuse of his wife-to-be by his insistence on a crackpot Scientology birth for her (I doubt it's his) child. Stupid fucker needs his head testing and she's just as bad for having anything to do with the talentless, rat-faced dwarf.

A hedgehog and a starfish

What do you get when you cross a starfish with a hedgehog?

Well, if you're me, you get agony.

I had a terrible toilet experience yesterday when I tried to pass something hedgehog-sized through my starfish - the fit is not good and I don't seem to be very flexible in that department. I was left in a cold sweat, gripping the nearby radiator for support.

A truly terrible experience.

Makes you wonder why people are fixated by putting things up their arses that really shouldn't go up there.


Numpties
Why do people see fit to vandalise things? On a couple of journeys to and from Manchester, I've noticed about 3 bus shelters and 2 telephone boxes that have had their glass totally destroyed in mindless acts of violence.

In cases like these Sniffy Justice would decree that the perpetrator would be forced to kick in their own windows, car windscreen and widescreen TV sets. Their mugshots would then be enlarged to poster sized and displayed in the repaired bus shelters.

Dickheads.

I'm not sure why this bothers me because I wouldn't be seen dead near a bus shelter or in a phone box, but it just really gets my goat up.


I hate my colleague: part the millionth
I have this colleague who I hate, I won't go into all the reasons why, but I just do. Readers of this blog will know that I am a well-balanced individual and that I don't take a dislike to things easily, so you'll agree that this person must be a complete cunt to have gotten me into this state.

She's started to do this thing whereby she'll do a "reply to all" to any e-mail that gets sent to all members of the team. It's her way of doing a "me Miss, I know, this is what I'm going to do" suck up thing. I could slap her for it.

Today's was regarding some national shite conference. An e-mail had gone around from our line manager to ask if anybody was going and colleague did a reply to all that stated: "Yes, I've already booked on, sent the study leave form and payment request off in January and had confirmation of booking - must have been keen!"

Yes, she must've been keen, but must she also be a prize fucking arsehole, suck-up, shitbag TIT?

E-mails get sent round for all sorts of things, she knows we all get them, but she sends them round to all of us again, just for good measure. Tis getting right on my tits.

Wanker.


Tomorrow

Houston, we have a problem

For the past six months, my motoring enjoyment has been ruined by a sticky accelerator cable. Everytime I change gear, the accelerator sticks, so I have to press really hard and over-rev the fucking thing and it jumps forward and it makes it seem that I don't know how to drive.

Tis REALLY pissing me off! Here I am, trying to drive somebody special around and trying to look at least a little bit cool and there you are, kangarooing the car and revving it like a bastard.

Driving in queueing traffic is ever such a lot of fun too.

MUST GET IT SORTED


Easter egg day
Easter egg day was nice.

• Easter egg count = 4
• Arguments with family members = 0
• Weird men in Ford Mondeos = 0
• Fuckin' delish lasagne = 1
• Italian Easter cake = 2 portions
• Outlaws introduced to = 4 (plus dog)
• Time spent with lovely Jo = not nearly enough

Fuck, I'm getting a bit soft. I need to lock myself in my room and generate some bile to spew out to the world.

Tell you what, people out shopping are right nobheads. They just wander around, really slowly in front of you while you're trying to get passed (past) them, then when you make your move to overtake, they switch directions and block your path. It's like they have an inner eye that knows the exact moment when you're about to try to pass them and the move out to stop you. I think they are really alien species, and their commanders are the ones who push prams. Their mission is to floor people by just stopping without warning, or to separate couples with a clever turn and stop. They work in pairs in a pincer action to make it impossible to back track, go round them and catch up with the person you're walking with.

Tossers.

Where's my cattle prod?

This is good...

Lost

More and more, it seems that people are relying on technology instead of wit to get them from A to B. There appears to be a boom in the sales of in-car satellite navigation systems as folk toss away their road atlases and A to Zs in favour of electronic directions. Personally, I don't see much wrong with using a road atlas and taking a look at where you are, looking at where you want to be and then making a note of the roads that join the two. Online routeplanners do pretty much the same thing for you.

But I suppose you can see the advantages of sat nav (especially if you're stupid); it must be nice having an electronic voice telling you where to turn and the like. I might jump on the bandwagon and introduce....

Sniffynav
"Go straight ahead for a bit; oooh watch out for that car; turn left at the roundabout - indicate you fucking dick-brained tosser! Jezusss, what is it with this fucking morons? Where were we? Oh, you missed the turn! Can't you read a road sign, dickhead? People like you shouldn't be allowed to drive. Shitforbrains."

Of course, satellite navigation doesn't always help. I was following some shit car earlier and as I came alongside it at the traffic lights, I noticed that it had some sort of Tom Tom go thing on the dashboard. I instantly scoffed at the thought of wanting to drive a car like that anywhere since I'd be embarrassed to take it out of the garage. When the lights turned to green, we set off. Checking my rear view mirror, I noticed the super-guided vehicle swerve across a couple of lanes at the last minute. Tosser. Just because you've got a frigging toy telling you where to go, it doesn't mean that can't take your eyes off the road.

My journey to work yesterday was delayed because of an accident on the motorway. I don't understand how this can happen when everybody is driving in the same direction. I suppose there's quite a speed variable, but fucking hell, if you can't keep your eyes open and leave a decent gap, then you shouldn't be driving. I bet the crash was caused by somebody being told to swerve across 3 lanes of the motorway by their Sat Nav.


Hot cross bun day
Today is the wonderful Christian celebration of Hot Cross Bun Day. This is where we celebrate nearing the end of Lent by getting our stomachs used to food again in readiness for Easter Egg Day on Sunday.

Talking of eating. There's something a bit odd about crunchin on cup-a-soup croutons when you're listening to music through earphones. Like little explosions in your head.


Weirdo freak man
He's there again. I'm starting to get paranoid.

Happy talk

Do you ever want to scream out at your colleagues and tell them to shut the fuck up? There are standard topics of conversation that have them engrossed for weeks on end, at least for a morning.

This morning, my journey to Base 2a was delayed due to an accident on the motorway. I got there about half an hour late, tutted to colleague 1: "Motorway accident. Late. Tsk" and this kicked off an entire morning of whinging about their delayed journey home the previous evening because of an accident. Jesus.

But I suppose this made a difference from:

1. Agenda for change (national pay restructuring programme and monumental cock up)
2. Base 2a being under threat from Base 2b
3. A particular woman at Base 2b being a twat
4. Everybody else being in the wrong
5. What's for lunch at the canteen
6. What's on offer at Aldi
   

They've been having the same rants for the past 2 years. It's getting a bit tiresome now. This sort of thing is why people run into work with automatic weapons and gun people down at their desks while they pore over the latest edition of the local newspaper, biscuit stuffed in yabbering mouth.


One thing about the sunshine is when you're trying to walk along and it's in your face. You can sense an oncoming presence, akin to aliens leaving a spaceship, but all you get is a bit of silhouette, lots of bright light and a blinding headache. You don't get to see people's facial expressions and so you don't benefit from clues as to which way they'll step to try to avoid you. At the same time, your own face has the expression of a champion gurner: eyes and mouth screwed up. You'd think the oncoming hoards would try to avoid you, but instead they head straight in your direction, then tut when you won't jump into the road to avoid them.

Fuckers.


I wish I could talk to people. I find it so uncomfortable discussing things that are bugging me, so they just get left and end up all twisted and sour. Then the things that are bugging me get blurted out when I write here instead.

Humph.

The sunshine of my life

The sunshine of your life is supposed to be a person or a thing that lights up your existence, makes your life worth living. The sunshine of my life is that really bright and low bastard that gets me right in the face on the journey to and from work each day at this time of year. It's a killer.

That weirdo freak man has been back again. That's twice since the night time shots the other week.

Here he was today when I got home from work:

If you look at him in close up, it looks like he's got a prosthetic nose. Fucking weirdo. I'm going to ask him what he's up to next time I see him.


Crisis
I'm having a bit of a one at the moment. It's sort of nice, but v stressful too. Families are weird, I never know how to talk to mine... They just shout at everything.

Get out of the office and into the springtime

I fucking wish.

The weather has been bloody terrible here for the last God only knows how long. We're currently suffering chronic "sunshine and showers" and the temperature is firmly stuck below 10°C. This means that you can't dress for the weather. It's better to stay indoors as much as possible.


Snot
I've got a cold. Having not had one for some time, I'd forgotten how thoroughly miserable they can make a person feel. This isn't even a bad one: it started on Thursday evening with an overwhelming fatigue and soreness on the left side of my throat. This moved fairly rapidly into the left hand side of my sinuses, which became blocked immediately. After an uncomfortable night's sleep, or lack of it, I didn't feel fit to travel the 30 miles to work, so took a sickie and went back to bed. I'm sure most of feeling ill associated with having a cold is down to lack of sleep more than anything.

By Friday night, I'd lost half of my bodily fluid through my nose. This was compounded by having a rather hot curry at an Indian restaurant.

Status report, Sunday 9th April, 19.07 hrs: glands up; cough started; nose still congested; throat not bad; feeling exquisitely giddy about starting seeing somebody utterly lovely.


Calvin and Hobbes
My Calvin and Hobbes collection came. This is a work of absolute beauty and I'm about to take to my bed to start working through them.

Warning: this vehicle is reVERSing!

Why do wagons and vans have audible reversing warnings? What difference does it make whether a vehicle is reversing or going forwards? Surely they can go faster going forwards and you'd have even less chance of getting out of the way if the thing came hurtling at you!

"Warning, this very heavy and big vehicle is coming at you REALLY FAST!"

And why don't cars have audible reversing warnings?

I like motor vehicle associated warnings, hazard lights are my absolute favourite. On the motorway yesterday, the traffic came to a sudden stand still after a minor bump further ahead. I was travelling in the outside lane and noticed that the traffic up ahead had stopped, so I stopped accordingly, well over 100 feet from the car in front of me. After I'd stopped, the stationary car in front of me put its hazard lights on - or should I say, the dickhead tosspot driver of the car in front thought it was a good idea to put their hazard lights on to warn me that they'd stopped, despite the fact that I'd clearly stopped about 100 feet behind them.

Why? Why do they do it? It's things like this that make me want to make the most of the runway I'd generated for myself and see how much speed I can build up before smashing into the back of the sorry little shits. Hoo wud win hout have a one tonne of big Nissan and a Vauxhall Corsa?

Dickheads.


Happy weekend (esp for Whinger)

Where has Sniffy been?

Has she been arrested?

Nope!

Has she got a new job?

Nope!

Has she got a new cat?

Nope!

Has she been flirting with somebody new in her life??????

Could be!

So yes, I've enjoyed a couple of social outings and have been slightly engaged with other stuff at other times. It's quite nice, isn't it?


Tap dancing: the return
In the tap dancing post, the fundemental thing that I forgot to mention - and thanks Jamie for reminding me - were those fucking annoying and utterly STUPID taps that you press down and they deliver water for a specified amount of time. Usually just enough time to get your hands one third rinsed and 100% scalded on the hottest water imaginable. Useless shite.


I hate my phone so much that I'm getting depressed
To those of you thinking of getting a new mobile phone ("cellphone"), a few words of advice:

Under no circumstances get a Samsung - EVER! Mine almost got thrown out of my car window as I was driving over the big motorway bridge this morning. It is the biggest pile of technological wank I have ever experienced in my entire life. I would gladly swap it for the first phone I ever had ten years ago; at least I didn't expect anything much from that one .

For the past week or so, I have been receiving and sending a fair few text messages and yesterday, I discovered that my phone had decided to forget all the custom swear words that I'd taught it. Why? Why would it do such a thing? I use predictive text input, and it's bad enough that you can't go back and correct a word without deleting it and re-entering it, but to randomly lose the entire custom dictionary??? What the fuck is that all about?

This morning's phonecall to Trillion was constantly interrupted by the fucking useless pile of shite constantly disconnecting the headset. WHY????? It's not even got voice activated dialing, so you have to fart around, pressing buttons on the headset (if it's talking to it) to get to make a call. I HATE IT!

The fourteenth of April 2006 is going to be a glorious day for me. On this day, I'll have endured this thing for six months and the upgrade penalty will be reduced from £150. I can't wait to get rid of the fucking thing and once I get my new one, I'm going to smash this thing up with a hammer and show the photos on this very blog.

Your days are numbered, Samsung!

Tap dancing

Lefty loosey, righty tighty. The simple rule of screwing. This applies to removing and putting on bottle tops, screwing in screws and turn taps on and off.

Taps with vertical threads and valves, or whatever the hell it is that makes them work, and horizontal taps, this is no problem. You get used to this at an early age. Same goes for radiator valves. However, how many times, and how many soakings does it take to learn how to use these:

Every time I use these friggin' things, I end up turning the water to full flow instead of turning it off. You end up getting blasted with a Niagara Falls like jet of water. If you're quick enough to react, you can sometimes jump out of the way, but this is rarely the case and you end up with embarrassing wet patches.

Brain does not compute sideways taps. Why, therefore, does every fucker insist on having them installed in their kitchens and bathrooms these days?

Tsk.

Hospital drama
Oh my word, look at this people!
Killers in NHS hospital anaesthetic room!

Just think, three weeks ago, they could've got me afterall!


Pussy humour

Apologies
I am a little distracted at the mo.
I forgot Piggy's rock and sweeties.
I still haven't prepared that presentation for Wednesday and I'm not in work tomorrow and I'm out tomorrow evening. Fuck.

Wales watching

I am returned from the beautiful island of Anglesey. It was top notch.

Hotel - ace
Food - fuckin' delish
People - really nice (the English ones at least ;))
Weather - mad
Conference - not bad
Journey - brilliant
Price - free

Some photos of my visit:

Bedroom


Ready for (in)action


View from conference venue


Another view from conference venue


Some rocks and stuff


South Stack, Holy Island

I joke about the Welsh hating the English, although some can still be a bit radical. One eminent ex-politician opened the conference, but I understand that he complained about the conference literature being written in English alone. The organisers pointed out that all delegates spoke English, some only spoke English and that the printing costs for bilingual literature would be prohibitively expensive.

I told this story to my friend who I stayed with last night. She told me that this was the same chap whose wife told a neighbour that she didn't want the neighbour's English children associating with hers because she wanted her children to speak Welsh alone. That'll get them far.

Anyway, North Wales is a lovely part of the world and the folk are great. Get your arses over there if you get the chance.