2008 #26 - On Mass

I don't like the phrase "en-masse". I don't like any french used as part of the English language. It's practically impossible to use it without sounding pretentious. Unfortunately, whilst I'd like to convert it to "on mass", the internet tells me that this isn't actually a correct translation, even though it sounds right.

The point of that? No point. It's too late and I just wanted to write a quick opener before getting into my list.

1. Generally good on food and drink although weekend festivities meant stupid amounts of takeaway and restauraunt food. Put simply, this isn't off target from the wide angle, but I probably won't step on the scales this week.

2. Fewer games this week. Still getting bad beats. This evening I was beaten by an AK holding made good by a turn and river straight against my flopped high two-pair. This guy shouldn't have been around at that point, but fake money players just refuse to lay down AK no matter how bleak it looks at the flop. Another 4th place. Goal remains well in check.

3. I chose not to take my camera out at the weekend as it was a social occasion, and I'm glad about it. Good thing is others had cameras so chances are I'll still see some photos.

4. Fantastic weekend. More of my closest friends in one place than in well over a year. A few notable absences but we were staying with others and as accomodating as they are, I just don't feel right asking too many people to stay on someone elses floor. We made enough mess as it was. Most fun weekend in ages, even though others were missed.

As I write this my gut is churning. I've never written about my stomach before. It's a saga with no answers or ending. Tonight I think it's my fault though. 8 day old pie might be pushing it. I'll try to finish before... well you know.

5. No question that I put the time in on music this week. The other half of the duo sent me some vocal only tracks which I have fitted to my recordings and predicatbly, I absolutely love them. With the lyrics also emailed sitting and singing them myself tonight I felt proud that I created half of what I was hearing echo around my living room.

6. No work goals still. My department looks like it will now merge with it's parent department so I doubt these are coming any time soon. This also leaves my sub-department in contention for.. no idea. I have no concern that I will have a job. On this occasion I can even see this going a certain way that might improve my location situation, but as it's pure speculation at this stage, I won't get too excited.

7. A colleague told me today that after 17 years of uncertainty he'd like to be an electrician. I'm impressed that after that long it can finally become clear. There may be hope for me yet. Kept this off my mind for the weekend but gave it plenty of thought during last week, which was a draining week for certain.

8. I'm faultering a little this week. I did swim and it was slightly easier than the first week back, so tomorrow should be okay too hopefully. I only managed one ride despite having fixed up my bike. It felt longer, but it was actually only 30 minutes. A jaunt around Braunstone Park, which seems to get even bigger every time I go there, and Western Park, which is still largely unexplored by me, and should be soon. Still no weights. Mini-goal failed and passes to next week, though it will almost certainly fail again.

I'm off to Ireland on Friday. First time out of the UK since 2005 and damn glad about it given how much i'm beginning to despise the country. I'm gradually moving away from popular opinion that our lives are being changed for the worse and realising that it's been pretty bleak for a long time. I spend so much time listening to US-centric opinions on matters of liberty that it's all too easy to forget that we never had the same type of freedom the US to some extent enjoyed. Glad to be heading to the place that just a week or so ago rejected something that given the opportunity they should have had, the Brits and many other people around Europe would have I hope also rejected.

But, really, i'm just as glad to be going for a break. A bit of drinking, a bit of culture, and no work for a few days. I think i'm excited!

I nearly missed writing this weekly post on Monday for the first time since it started in January tonight, but I didn't. It's still Monday for another half hour. Next week it's very likely that I will miss the Monday post. Then again, the N800 is coming along, so anything's possible. I'd probably rather wait until I get back though. We'll see.

2008 #25 - Quiet One

A quieter weekend after last week, involving family time and listening to a lot of but what probably only amounted to a small proportion of the first ever 72 hour podcast (keithandthegirl.com).

What progress?

1. A couple of my meals seemed a little large last week so i'll watch that this time. I'm wondering if I can stretch my Madras to 4 servings, but then thats a lot of meals eating the same thing. This is what the freezers for though, right? Lunch-wise everything is on track and back to normal barring today where a visit to what is essential a health food shop led to me snacking on yoghurt covered raisins. I hadn't had them in a while see..

2. Played plenty of fake poker during the podcast listening hours. Got back up and lost it all again. Standard stuff and the weekday rule remains. It's not pissing me off quite so much now as i've remembered that when I play in the higher cost tournaments and there's less dumb fuck call-all play to contend with, I do better overall. Shame i'm back playing with the morons again.

3. I'm not even sure where my camera is right now, but there was no occasion this week where i'd have taken it anywhere, which is of course, the new rule.

4. Didn't make it out at the weekend but managed a weeknight activity with a couple of people I see a little less often! Saw a pretty cool Jazz duo at a local music bar.

5. I didn't spend any time concentrating on music this week because it was firmly penciled inked in that Sunday would be all about that, with the lyrical half of my loose duo due round to show me his progress. Turned out he a) forgot and b) made other plans. I sent a passive aggressive "ok no prob" in response. No grudge but considering he'd told me he was looking forward to the jam four days earlier it was a surprising turn. So, I fail this one due to others, though I have spent a fair bit of time on the guitar during the week, so it's not a dead loss.

6. Still no work goals. This was actually addressed at our team meeting without any prompting from me. Funny to watch an explanation of the situation as an exception as if it didn't happen every single year.

7. I've been considering career stuff this week, mostly within the company rather than outside. I'm thinking that now I've decided to stick in Leicester for a bit i'd like to get back to working a little nearer. Once again reconsidering what this means in terms of options.

8. Went for my Tuesday swim after a 20 day gap. The first third was an absolute nightmare. I felt no strength whatsoever. I had also made the mistake of cycling to the leisure centre. Big mistake. The distance is just enough to get shagged out whilst not yet being warmed up only to stop for 10 minutes to get changed and start again. This is not the way to ease into exercise, particularly after a bout of illness. I also managed another ride, although right now I have no idea where I went (correction - I went direction Anstey, which is one big up hill struggle). What I didn't do is lift weights, and this is really what I need to do. Mini-goal for the week is to get back into this. Overall though, not a bad week. I also fixed the things on my bike that most needed fixing, which should keep this thing going nicely. Impressed by my abilities in this area given how long since I last did it.

Next few weeks are gonna be more fun than progress I think. I'm in a cautiously optimistic mood. I'm even refraining from a sarcastic toned close of "what's going to happen to change that"? I don't think anything bad will happen this week.

Actually something bad did happen last week, a little distanced from me, but enough to get me thinking. A former colleague with a young family unexpectedly died. Talking here about my thoughts being with the family is meaningless, as nobody knows who I am or who i'm talking about, though they certainly are. More on my mind is my long held stupid assumption that i'm going to be the guy that lives to 100. In those terms i'm only 25% done, but it could just as easily all end tomorrow. In my dying second would I be able to say "no regrets"? Hell no. Not by the longest shot I can imagine. I wonder how people who can say that manage it.

Nonetheless, I remain largely unchanging but cautiously optimistic. I'm really not as smart as I used to think I was. (there's the sarcastic tone!).

Drobo

Well I was going to bitch a bit about the lack of clarity on Drobo but then I got interested and now I want one. It's a bit pricey though when you consider you still have to buy the drives to put in the box.

A big selling point seems to be that you can cram it with drives of different sizes. The demo videos make this point well, but the front of the site doesn't. This is why it's better than RAID, and this is also what always put me off RAID.

Have to say also that I didn't think the back of drive interface ports were nearly as standardised in position enough to allow them to be used in fixed slots. I'm sure i've had at least one drive where the power port was vertical. I can't have imagined that surely?

Pretty cool though. Got my attention. Take a boring topic such as storage and make it cute by putting it in a rounded box and refer to it as a robot. Not in the least bit surprised this is available for the Mac as well as the PC.

2008 #24 - Shitstorm

Here's a good example of flawed logic from my weekend. If I in fact left you behind and went home, but you saw me arrive home over an hour after you got there believing I was already inside ignoring you, how can you possibly continue to believe that I left you behind. Surely it's clear that in fact, you left me behind. You did it because you thought I'd gone, true, but I have never given you any reason to suspect I'd do that, particularly in a strange (to you) city in the middle of the night.

This was the second part of a two part shitstorm in what was otherwise a very enjoyable night out in Birmingham on Saturday, subtitled "Angry and Emotional Women Won't Listen". Occasionally I don't mind my singularity.

Right, last week I realised too late that I hadn't written my 2008 post and tried to speed through it. That didn't work, and I still wrote plenty about how bad I'd done that week. Thankfully this week was a little better, at least in the areas I'm most focussed on.

1. Much better on the food and drink. Lunch was wrestled back to normal and evening meals continue to be portion controlled.

2. Seven days ago I wrote about my ridiculously bad luck with fake poker. I have admittedly managed to place in a few games since then, but only in games that I definitely should have managed to win given my stack size. In every other game I continue to be beaten by bullshit. It scares me how angry this makes me, because it's so unimportant. I've always had a hard time accepting theory surrounding odds and probability, because frankly on any one occasion the opposite to the expected can easily happen. The theory in poker is that if playing well you should only lose so much of the time. I don't think my play has changed. I've tried loosening and things got worse, but now my tight game is back to delivering me consistent 4th place, which I can't stand. It's so bad that I feel like hitting my laptop when it happens. This is a problem because I have a long history of breaking things out of anger. A lightswitch, countless keyboards from before they were quite so cheap. The remote control for my first little TV hit the wall from 10 feet away. I also punched a hole in a door at my university hall which later cost me £160 to replace. The strange thing is, i've never owned a stress ball! This is all quite irrelevant to the goal, but as you may have noticed I like tangents in these posts. As far as the goal goes, I am still religiously on target.

3. I should have taken my camera out on Saturday night. I could have captured the shitstorm. I also went out on Friday locally with a good group of people, so another opportunity missed, and to be frank, I'm okay with it. I've started to remember some of the things I learned several years ago about how to be a little better in social situations. How I came to forget these things and went back to being the overly shy guy from before those lessons I'm now not sure, but the point here is, the guy constantly snapping photos is annoying people and at the same time not talking to anyone. I don't want to be that guy, so I'm revising this goal yet again. I am now holding myself accountable for taking my camera with me only when I go somewhere I would want to take photos. Whether I'm alone or in a group of any particular size is now irrelevant.

4. Shitstorm. That said, a great weekend. I met loads of people on Friday night all of whom were very welcoming, then saw a lot of existing friends on Saturday. I may have somehow lost one too of course. That remains to be seen. Weeknight activity isn't very likely at the moment as I'm either too tired to suggest going out or wanting to get some exercise. I have to choose and make no apologies for it.

5. Did I actively work for two hours on my music? Hard to say. I did learn I need to keep better track. I definitely spent over one hour trying to become better acquainted with my setup.

6. I asked my manager about work goals. The answer is still no. There are six people directly above me in the company org chart, and I cannot have targets until all of them have targets. I believe we're down to the lower two now so hopefully it won't be too much longer.

7. Still just a potato.

8. As discussed last week, my illness is still wearing off. My throat has not entirely recovered but I do think i'll manage to go for a swim tomorrow. I did cram in a decent ride last week though, which is better than nothing. I'm now gearing up to start doing some longer rides. It's about 12 miles to Hinckley, somewhere I drive regularly for work purposes, so I might try that initially. Must do some work on the bike too though. I doubt once i'm riding on a bare innertube it's going to last very long.

Stupid new goal that I certainly won't be tracking here - Now that Lost is over for 2008, I want to fill the void until it returns. I'm an avid fan of this show. I was surprised to realise that i'd have to watch three episodes a week to get through the show before it returns. More likely i'll spurt and wane, but I think I'll try this. In fact I already started and rewatched part one of the pilot last night. I had completely forgotten how good this first episode was, but at least I can now remember how I got so quickly and deeply hooked. It's kind of hard to accept based on that first 40 minutes that in about 40 days they'll go underground and start typing numbers into a mystical computer.

I had a conversation with somebody who doesn't like the show recently, and his reasoning was that in good sci-fi, boundaries are established. The world may be fictitious, and incredible things may be able to happen, but his assertion seems to be that introducing new rules, quite literally game changers, is not a good thing. I disagree. Whilst I'm nowhere near stupid enough to believe that every idea that crops up was conceived prior to episode one, for me, the story is still weaving together well with these game changers, and I do have some faith that things that we saw two years ago will still be further explained. Polar bear, not so interested in. Swan? Yes. That needs more. I think we're going to get it.

One thing about Freighter survivors though. They were no closer to the island than the chopper which didn't move, and the move clearly didn't take the water (great shot btw), so even if Jin was blown clear of the thing, he sure as shit wasn't any closer to the island when it disappeared 2-3 minutes later, so people's view that he swam back I just can't understand.

That'll do.

2008 #23 - Short and not so Sweet

It's way too late to be doing this and I was way too tired at work today not to already be in bed. It's not been a good week for staying on track, so lets just get it over with.

1. Food at home continues to be great. At work I broke my rules most days last week. This week i'm trying to get back on track but for safety reasons I think I need to introduce an extra cup of coffee mid-afternoon if i'm as tired as I am some days. Truth is, it does help me to stay awake when driving. As for what possessed me to buy vending machine style snacks so much last week, that was the hunger I spoke of. I have changed the lunch a little to try to fix this.

2. I am SO pissed off with this fucking poker game right now. I couldn't be on a worse run of luck. What hurts me the most is that without fail every time i'm in a late in tournament last ditch high blinds all in, my opponent not just catches in the middle, but starts with fucking gold, every single fucking time. I'm definitely addicted to this game, because i'm not remotely enjoying it anymore. It's not just this but the fact that if I'm trying to play anything to do with a king, an ace will always show up. When I started playing Facebook poker I believed it was suspicious just how much high cards showed up. I got over this, but now i'm wondering again. I'm seriously considering extending my rule on this piece of shit game to the weekends.

3. My camera went nowhere.

4. I touched base last weekend and will this weekend. This one continues to be fine. I haven't initiated any weeknight events successfully, although I did try two weeks ago, failing, which may be what's putting me off.

5. It's decided. My song writing rule must change. I have hooked up with an ex band member who is now writing the lyrics to my existing songs. FUCK ME I'M IN A BAD MOOD OVER THAT STUPID POKER GAME AND THE FACT THAT I STILL HAVE A VERY SORE THROAT FROM A BOUT OF SICKNESS 10 DAYS AGO AND I WANT TO GO TO BED BUT I STILL HAVE TO IRON A SHIRT BEFORE THAT HAPPENS! Right, yes, the rule is now simple. I will spend a minimum of two hours every week actively working on my music, and my recording abilities. The exact nature of this is less important, but I will describe how I put the time in here to show it's happening. I'll decide after a bit if this is enough time or too easy.

6. Still no work goals to stick to.

7. My mind is winding back up to this. After a month or so of trying to not think about it I can feel it annoying me again, but as far as this week goes, i've only given it a small amount of thought.

I'm sure nobody ever taught me that an I used with an apostrophe mid-sentence requires capitalisation. Just looking around it's clearly the case, but I really don't think it was ever mentioned to me.

8. No exercise for most of the week but I did bike for 55 minutes tonight. Not the most strenuous ever but it felt good to get back on there. I still don't think I should go swimming yet until my head recovers a little more, but I will get back on the weight bench this week.

Not a good week. Getting a new TV was cool but watching too much TV always leaves me in a poor frame of mind. I didn't do that today, but I did do it yesterday and it hasn't really gone away yet. Better post next week hopefully. I'm off to iron a shirt. It will take 5 minutes but it will feel like 25.

I HATE FACEBOOK POKEr!