2008 #47 - Late, Great.. i already said 2008

This was supposed to be done yesterday. Ran out of time, for not particularly good reasons. Quick notes for today.

- The so called devil tries to tempt you when you're alive. Convince you to do the most unspeakable evil. Then, when you die, you go to hell and suddenly the guy's all self righteous? Calling you a sinner? Punishing you for the bad things that he asked of you? For some reason I never looked at it this way before, but it seems like a disconnect that doesn't get addressed by the mainstream devil talkers. Fill me in, devil talkers.

- Guess it was just one note.

1. Food. I am sticking to my rules almost but not quite. I recognise this very clearly as the early winter over-indulgence. I force myself to feel cold and compensate by snacking. Eating does warm the body, as does digestion. It's a poor excuse. I have started noticing calorie counts on various things I eat this last week and I must say a few things are surprising. Given that i'm all about data crunching maybe i'd make a good calorie counter. Note to self to pay some more attention to this.

2. I am watching too much TV this week. That is to say television shows, not films, which I consider a different form of entertainment. It's a one week thing. Next week I will try to get out a bit in the evening for some variety, even if it's just for a walk. Maintaining a drain circling number of chips in fake poker has become an art form now. I'm stuck. As predicted the shorter commute is making it harder to properly listen to podcasts/internet shows. At least 2/3 of the stuff I listen to I insist on paying good attention to. This means not reading from a screen. Driving is perfect for this, but I've lost an hour a day where I did this. I am certainly not complaining. The all knowing idiot Randy Marsh of South Park had a line in an episode of South Park late last season - something about not randomly surfing whilst watching TV. I think the same applies here. It wouldn't be a bad idea to occasionally sit in the living room whilst the laptop sits somewhere else.

3. I feel a little in-shell right now and it bothers me. I know i've been better in this regard at other times in my life and it's hard to understand how one goes backwards in this regard. The only explanation I can find is lack of exposure to people, which is what this was all about. All I can do is try to keep this at the forefront of my mind. I am, and always have been far too concerned about others perception of my intentions. When I am made to look a fool, usually light heartedly I can now brush it off so easily it amazes me, but the fear that precedes that is still with me. Must open up.

4. Working well. Much happier to add a little time at the end of the day. With the new walk to the car park at the bottom of site I haven't yet managed to arrive at my desk on time anyway, but without even trying the time has been made up. There's so much less urgency to get up and driving when home is only 25 minutes away. This gives a better perception to others in the same office who may not know my hours. I've never liked that people have these views, but it's clear they do. Believe it or not, i've heard 9-5ers slating 8-4ers for leaving at 4. I've never heard one shred of evidence that the last hour in the afternoon they work is more productive than the first one I work. In fact, i've heard plenty to the contrary. Still need to get to my set goals!

5. Still happy, so still nothing of note to talk about.

6. I eased myself into weights with the dumbells. On old advice I then waited several days and will get back to them in about 20 minutes time. If i'm doing weights I need to be more careful to avoid injury. I strained a lot of muscles last time I tried and I think this is partly what has been putting me off getting back to it. I also went for a 2 mile walk at the weekend. Not a huge amount of exercise, but I promised myself it wouldn't be nothing, and it's not nothing. Next week the promise is the same.

India is under attack. The time, here at least, is ten to ten.

Drunken Post November

Been a while since I posted whilst getting myself beered up.

Things I noticed just now:

Lovefilm works Saturday. Blockbuster didn't. That's a big plus. Even if I don't see it 'til Tuesday, knowing now what's coming is good. If it manages to show up Monday, all the better.

Forgotten how much I liked Milkdrop. I've not touched weed that much in my life, but I get the feeling Milkdrop would be a good companion.

I love my new lamp. It does exactly what it's supposed to.

Why the hell can't I get into books. I haven't even touched the Boosh book that my friends bought me for my birthday over a week ago. I'm quite sure i'll find what's in it very funny. There is some mental block to picking up the paper.

The IT crowd has managed a third series (or season - the US way makes more sense but this isn't a show that's likely to export). Not bad for a pretty weak premise. Still quite funny. Reliant on talent more than writing, but the talent is there. Chris Morris was still the better boss but Sanch does a reasonable job. Sanch's real name I have no idea of, which I should feel ashamed of as he's also a Boosh cast member from s1.

Speaking of which I should buy Dark Place on DVD.

Breakout is a great song. The Foos are a great band. Some seem to dislike what they're doing now, and that I must admit i've lost track of, but there's very little I don't like at all. I am in the group that actually prefers the stuff from "Lose" to most of the stuff from "Foo" and "Shape", although Monkey Wrench will always be the preferred track overall so can't ignore "Shape". Also like a lot of the stuff on "One" but no idea about anything since. Best of You I swear to any higher being listening was a commercial radio advert jingle on the Chiltern Network some time in the 90's. Wish I could remember what company to prove it.

Wireless mice are great until they need batteries. Then you vow to go back to wires. You never actually do go back to wires though.

I bought cushions about a week ago. I did this despite (and I am about to mention a third UK comedy believe it or not) Steve from Coupling's fantastic rant about the fact that we don't actually sit on them. True, but we do lean on them, and they do add something to my living room. They may or may not be a little off the straight - I can't decide. Other people saw them and didn't comment. Besides which my furniture is so shitty it can't hurt to add a bit of comfort.

My singing voice is worrying me. I always prided myself on pitch in the face of a voice that may not exactly light up a room, but now I notice my voice wavering. Not good. I fucking love to sing, but the worse a person is at it the harder it is to justify doing.

Machine Head. Must see them again live some time. I think that was one of the most impressive gigs I've seen, buy I only saw it once.

It's not hard to see why people drink. It's more than to forget or to get a buzz. It's the sense of self that supposedly shines through. Problem is that if feeling that way all the time wasn't a problem, we probably would do. I doubt I could earn my salary with the mindset I have at this moment. If I could find a way to survive and forgo the salary, maybe I would try it. Unfortunately I also like the home comforts. This throwaway paragraph in a drunken post is actually one of my main struggles. Pathetic struggle if you look at some people's struggles, but at some point it's necessary to stop denying yourself self analysis on the basis that there are people with bigger problems. Even dying kids in deserts aren't the worst off in the world.

Ok that's enough for now. I gotta go outside.

2008 #46 - 28

I am now 28. An insignificant birthday. How about a train of thought...

I now have the biggest standing lamp I've ever seen in the corner of my room. It is awesome and after years of missteps I finally have something that does decent mood lighting. This of course sounds like materialistic crap, but I've always considered the vibe of a room to mean something. Funny actually, as for the first year plus living here I did nothing whatsoever about it. Standard energy saving bulbs are going to make this kind of thing harder. I've not yet seen how well the ones that can handle dimming work. It's weird to think of a fluorescent bulb of any kind being anything other than bright white or off. Having just fitted a cheap £1 bulb in the kitchen I only really notice that it takes maybe 30 seconds to be bright enough not to notice it's not an incandescent bulb, but then if you actually think about it you notice that it's like being in a room with tubes overhead. That type of brightness is unforgiving in almost any environment. It's just not pleasant light. Soon these will be the only bulbs available legally. There's no stopping this one. The weight of the world is behind it. As far as having a fairly speedy impact on reducing energy consumption, it's hard to argue with. Until you remember that suddenly you're being told that it's illegal to connect a little glass dome with a thin piece of wire running through it to your electricity supply to help you see around your house. You might say that nobody is saying it's illegal, but you'd be being naive. First it will be illegal to make them, then illegal to buy them, and when enough time has passed that having one will prove you must have done one of the above things, it will become illegal to own them. Of course, it's not likely you'll get caught, unless you let a policeman into your house... or one peers through your window and sees it... or somebody you wronged decides to blow the whistle. The police wouldn't waste my time with this would they? Who the hell knows. In one night a policeman who I know and trust said both that they "have better things to do" than worry about a car missing a mirror, but moments later recalled a time when they needed "more arrests" so arrested a guy sleeping drunk in his car. People: This is not a crime in any true sense of the word. It's not harming anyone. It's based on the thinly veiled notion that a person drunk inside a car is only one step from driving it. I fail to see how me being drunk in my house and walking outside, getting into my car and driving off is any different. The guy sleeping in the car is not a bad guy. Neither is the policeman in question. He's not a bad guy by a very long stretch, but I guess feels that if he wants to make a positive difference and do good, he must put up with the flawed system which requires less positive behaviour, mostly it seems clear, only for the good of massaging figures to secure required levels of government fund-pie. My libertarian leanings are still not fully formed ideals, closer every day though they get, but this type of incentive is a no brainer to me - plain wrong.

That went pretty much how I expected. This is my mind a lot of the time, but with more anger over injustice than it is easy to express in the written form.. Of course, i'm not a writer.

1. Ate well, kept to the food rules. There was some snacking at work this week courtesy of my birthday cake offering. Nothing too bad. Drank a little less coffee and my skin has improved a little.

2. I am very well entertained. I am watching lots of films, playing poker, Wordscraper (all I consider mind expanding). Enjoying the US shows, trying to work out if i'm still enjoying Heroes as much now that it's turning into Lost, which I still love anyway. Finally after a 2 week backlog managed to do all the feed reading I had been putting off. I am seriously considering reading a book.

3. Did I mention I love my new office? So many people talking to me. So much better than sitting around all day. Had a great birthday night out on Friday with many if not quite all the people I would have liked there. All good people nonetheless. The question I have is how do I break the cycle with people i've reached nod and smile briefly status with, but never really intended to. It's never pleasant to have to do that and i'd rather say hello, but oddly I feel it's weird to given I haven't been saying it recently. This is a strange fear and I will try to get over it.

4. I'm applied. Very applied. I haven't felt this useful at work in many months. It's hard to believe my job hasn't actually changed at all. My work goals, once again, are still untouched. As I mentioned, these may have to wait until next week, assuming things that are supposed to be finished this week are finished (although I already know they won't quite be finished).

5. As last week, am enjoying my role minus the bullshit that I hate, not feeling like it's a treadmill, so happy to keep going. This isn't a cop out, even if it sounds like it.

6. But this is. Why the fuck can't I bring myself to do anything about exercising. I am not depressed. I'm in a great mood. I know what exercise I want to do, but I continue to procrastinate. I noticed today that even my fairly baggy work shirt is no longer hiding my shape as well as it normally has. Some weight training right now would do me the world of good. This is the week my friends. I will do this. I must!

2008 #45 - Doing Stuff I Like

I like doing stuff. Nothing is more depressing than having nothing to do. It's not so much being bored. There are a hundred things I have at one time or another thought I would do when I had time. Making sure I have a copy of every CD in my car, for example. Right now I don't. I'm never stuck for activity, but having stuff to do that isn't just a chore puts me in a much better mood than sitting around.

Last night I visited my family. This weekend I went out in another city on Friday and Saturday, the latter involving seeing my favourite band at my favourite mid-sized gig venue. I went to the Cinema on Tuesday and Wednesday. In a week of far less sitting around, I feel good.

This is no big revelation, but it bears remembering.

Note - i'm going back to not recapping the text of the goals each time. Waste of space. If you want to see them see the last few weeks.

1. I finally made up for my bad behaviour a few weeks ago by staying away from the corn chips and the real chips last week. Other than that I continued to eat moderately. I steered clear of any snack food at work, although there was some celebratory food on Friday of which I did eat some. I'm overindulging in coffee at the moment and my skin is reacting as I know very well it does. This is useful actually because at 28 I refuse to have constant acne problems, which will help me to cut back. So, not perfect but better than recently.

2. I think my opening paragraphs pretty much indicate I'm fine here this week. If anything I've had far less time for the normal entertainment activities.

3. I am doing my very best on this point. I reached out to about 10 people last night to try to arrange some kind of a birthday night out. I normally find this kind of thing hard to co-ordinate, much like when I try to organise a meeting at work, but I seem to have succeeded here, so I should get a chance to see most of my friends in the next week or so and catch up with those I don't see as much any more. At work I am now surrounded by hundreds of people, and I love it. I don't want to overstate this because this is only day three, but there's an atmosphere in this office which I haven't felt in almost three years. I am doing my best not to ignore people in the hope that I may get to know some of them in time. Great to be back with the people rather than sitting around a quiet office in the West Midlands finding it hard to get motivated because it feels like there is nobody else working in the entire place. In a bustling administrative office everybody is working, and I feel much more inclined to join them. This office move is great for so many reasons, but I didn't even expect this one!

4. I am working hard. I haven't had one of those days in which I felt ineffective in the last week or so. I have a major project with a tightening deadline. In the new location It's easier to get on, as I already mentioned, plus time flies. Days dragged on in the old place even when I was supposedly busy. Now the clock races to lunch and then through the afternoon. I put in an extra hour to buy myself some time to get something small fixed on my car later in the week, without a second thought. I do still need to make some progress on my goals, which means giving just a little less focus to this big project, but that may need to wait until after next week. Beyond that I think I need to specifically book time for certain activities. The whole GTD thing after a fair amount of reading got annoying but there are plenty of basic principles in there that can work and this seems like one.

5. Last week I saw a job that I thought I could do. I might not have been able to do it in reality, as it might have had an engineering background as a sticking point - this wasn't clear. I decided not to apply in the end, as I think I like where I am. The things that made my job a drag are mostly gone and I have the opportunity finally to see if I really enjoy this job without all those drains on my energy and cash, plus in a more agreeable environment. I'm not saying that this is the end of rethinking my career, and I will continue to do so, but as of this week, be aware that the current thinking is making the most of what I have, not out of compromise in any major way, mostly out of the good vibe i'm getting.

6. Still the only thing I haven't managed to progress on. Or is it? I actually got an intense work out in my annual trip to a punk gig on Saturday night. If you choose to join in, and I do, it's incredibly hard work. Yes, you do get elbowed in the face, sweated on by many other people, and crushed in ways you'd expect to hurt more, but in trying to stay upright in all that and show enthusiasm for what is an awesome performance, exercise happens. This was coincidental exercise however. It doesn't speak to my progress in this area, which is essentially still poor.

All things considered, my attitude has improved greatly in the last week. I like where this is going.

Other note - if you are like me a late twenties type person that has never had a dentist that thought you needed a cleaning before, be prepared for an incredibly unpleasant experience. They will tell you it's not as bad as a drilling, and of course the net result isn't as bad, but all the worst things about drilling are present in a cleaning, and anticipation of pain runs through the entire experience. On top of that, it takes about four times as long. I do however like the results.

Stop Hailing Change!

Seriously. Celebrate it if it happens. It's not fucking historic until he actually becomes president and does anything differently. Until then it's just promises made before inauguration. Why you blinkered people can't see that there's every chance this guy will behave in exactly the way all those before him have bugs the shit out of me, and i'm not even American.

Aren't the general public capable of learning anything from the past?

2008 #44 - Saw V

Just saw Saw V. I thought I was enjoying it. Then it ended. The tagline for this film in the UK at least has been "You won't believe how it ends". Let me say in no uncertain terms, the ending of this film is entirely predictable, twist free and underwhelming. Searching around for to figure out what I missed it seems I missed nothing. Movies with weak endings shouldn't have taglines about their endings. That's just dumb.

Sigh.

1. I will eat in moderation at all routine meals. The majority of my meals will be essentially healthy. When I snack or overindulge, I will specifically redress the balance later. I will also drink caffeine based drinks in moderation. At the end of a week, if I feel my intake has been too high, the goal has not been met, and I will state this.

I am not eating in the moderation I should be at present. This is definite. My meals are alright, but I am snacking more. Things I buy to replace other less healthy options end up getting eaten as snack food. I need to do better here, as I think I am starting to gain weight again.

2. I will not spent extended periods of time focussed on one form of entertainment. If one form of entertainment has consumed an evening or weekend then I have failed. I will vary it, and ensure that I don't neglect the mind expanding.

Still keeping it very varied. In the interest of keeping it short I won't give any detail, but it's all good.

3. I will talk to people. People I know will not feel I am ignoring them. People I don't know will not forever be people I don't know. If they do, or they are, I have failed. Why all this? Because spending any extended period of time alone is a terrible idea, and the more you initiate, the less likely that is to happen.

Still doing better at this. Mental note to keep it going when i'm back in an office of hundreds as of later this week. Plenty of people to get to know there compared to very few where i've been most recently.

4. I will apply myself to my work. Why? Because all career uncertainty aside, if I'm doing something, I must be doing it well, plus it's the only way I will continue to advance in my current career.

I am doing this, but neglecting the goals set at work. This is a common problem not unique to me, but I am due an interim review very shortly and as yet I haven't made much progress on my goals. No big deal as I have pointed out before, I cannot progress any further at the end of the year by meeting these, but obviously the polar opposite has consequences. That, however, would take some serious neglect of not just the goals but my work itself, and that won't happen. Nonetheless, I will get to these shortly, as there's some worthwhile stuff in there.

Side note - a few weeks ago I wrote about a session I attended on inclusion, diversity, etc, and was strangely positive about it. This week the (or it is a) company emailed the entire organisation to explain that such initiatives were okay but didn't focus enough on the inclusion element. The solution, it is alleged, is to make this a key part of the day to day job. I don't know what this means but no doubt it's another opportunity for me to get very angry about just how much interest the people that are just supposed to pay me for the work I do (AND THAT IS ALL) seem to have in my personal thought process. Please hear me! I will not be told what to think by my employer. Just as I start to make peace with the company, they are going to start judging me annually on how inclusive I am. How the fuck they expect to do this I have no idea, and I'm in no rush to find out. Frankly the tone of this email was horrible, includng several uses of the phrase "radical new approach", though I imagine the people that wrote it would be very surprised that anybody would have my reaction (they would see it as entirely positive), however, it took five minutes to confirm i'm not alone in hating what I read. If I really had to single out any group of people to persecute it wouldn't be a race, sex, faith or age or disability group. It'd be the people that insist that they know better than other people on issues that simply aren't based in fact, but on opinion. If anybody involved in this or anything like it ever reads this, please take my FUCK YOU very seriously. You and all like you anger me greatly, and your no doubt already forming assumption that I am just the type person you need to "reach" offends me, and many, many other people, unbeknownst to you. If anything, it might be good to "reach" you and get you to understand my view on all this, but the difference between you and me of course, is that I would never want to tell you what to think - just what I think.

That was a tangent, but an important one. Corporate stupidity. To boil it down - let us all celebrate how the same, and yet different we are by making sure that everybody agrees that we're all the same, and yet different. Go fuck yourself, once and for all. If I sound pissed off, it's because I am.

5. I will continue to rethink my career inside and outside my current role weekly. Why? Because I don't want to find myself realising I am on a career treadmill and nothing more. I must ensure what I do is meaningful to me, and ideally others. This doesn't inherently necessitate change, just frequent consideration.

Still thinking about the future. Stuff like the rant above make me want to walk out of the place, but that wouldn't help. I am gradually getting to the point where I can take these stands and worry less about the consequences. The loud, disagreeable types do fail to progress - this much is true, but I can live with that if i'm doing and saying the right thing, as opposed to towing lines which make me want to throw up. So, I don't want out. I'm even starting to consider alternative roles within the company again, which I haven't done in a while.

6. I will find the time to manage a 3 times a week exercise schedule. Why? Much like the eating, it's about long term health gains and short term physical gain. Lose a little weight. Tone up a bit.

Still not happening.

My self discipline is at an all year low right now. I blame the weather. We had both a proper summers day, first snow and air frost all in October. It's a bit warmer again now, thankfully, but it's all very confusing and can affect mood and drive.

This is the first post i've written in a long time which makes me worry slightly that I could be identifiable. I keep this anonymous precisely so I can say things like the above without fear of repurcussion. It's a lot less destructive to rant about policy of an unnamed company from the perspective of an unnamed individual than it is to reveal both and face the possibility that it could be used against me later. Many people are far too liberal in how they speak in public on Facebook etc. Nonetheless, I stand by my opinions, and there's certainly nothing aimed at any one individual.. More at a certain group of people.. Ahh crap there I go putting people in groups again.

!!!!
I'm going to bed. Peace out.

2008 #43 - Inclusion, Diversity, Equality

Today I attended a three hour session on inclusion, diversity and equality. In the lead up to this event I have had so may fantastic (literal meaning) thoughts about how I would justify my scepticism of the event should the need arise, most ending in me walking out. I'd read a series of articles and blog posts making it clear that such training is just a tick in a box for a company. The first few minutes of the session littered with disclaimers led me to expect the same. Wouldn't it be just typical that this event actually turned out to be good?

Well, it was. Three good actors, one facilitator, minimum cheese until right at the end, no preaching, no lecturing, just scenarios and group discussions. No pressure to participate at any point, which is oh so rare in this type of situation. If this type of "training" must happen in the workplace, this, for me, is the way to do it, although it must be made clear that it's not likely to challenge anyone's personal prejudices. I would however argue that an employer has no business doing this in any case. Trying to force beliefs on employees will immediately alienate and ultimately have little effect. This drama led workshop, if approached open mindedly, for me at least is the right way for an employer to approach the matter.

On with my show.

1. I will eat in moderation at all routine meals. The majority of my meals will be essentially healthy. When I snack or overindulge, I will specifically redress the balance later. I will also drink caffeine based drinks in moderation. At the end of a week, if I feel my intake has been too high, the goal has not been met, and I will state this.

Meals have continued to be largely healthy. My decision to not do either of two bad things only half landed - I still did one. I will see if I can roll my punishment over and do a week without either (although not this already can't be this week, as now i've done the other - only semantics save me from being pretty poor on this one). Caffeine drinks at work are a little too plentiful in general so I need to watch that, but not over the top. I need to refocus on the weekend. My non-eating before nights out is pretty uniformly leading to make-up unhealthy snacks at the tail end. I used to have perfect solutions to this and I need to rediscover them. Toast and marmite is coming back. Yes, it will be thick marmite, and no, there won't be any butter involved. DEAL WITH IT. I also baked some savoury scones on Sunday. They were square and rough, because I couldn't find a sieve for the flour or a cutter for the pastry. They actually taste pretty good. Next time i'll make more and put raisins in them like I should have done this time. This is to replace part of my main meal, and should save a little money, plus be a little less sugary than the Kiplings pies I was buying recently. Have done another Chilli cook, also on Sunday. Worked out that these give 5 meals. This is insanely good value eating at what I think is about £4 worth of ingredients. Enough on food.

2. I will not spent extended periods of time focussed on one form of entertainment. If one form of entertainment has consumed an evening or weekend then I have failed. I will vary it, and ensure that I don't neglect the mind expanding.

Balancing things quite nicely. Guitar factored in each day, working slowly through games, listening to Podcasts in the shower and car mostly. I am also keeping up with my semi-diverse feed reading. This is the reading I do, pretty much. I would like to read books but I've come to accept it's just not in my nature. For mind expanding, this is the current source.

I am seriously considering returning to postal DVD rental after a... 6 month? gap. Maybe a little longer. There's too much I still need to see, and plenty I need to see for the second time. I'm putting off subscribing at the moment because I know as soon as I do this I'm a slave to getting value from the service. Blockbuster served me quite well but it was a bad breakup. I must try their now main and I think perhaps only competitor, Lovefilm (some others are fronts for the same company). They sound more ruthless than Blockbuster by some accounts - the day a lost in post DVD costs me the price of DVD, the service is going. Blockbuster never even questioned a lost in post, not that I ever cheated them.

3. I will talk to people. People I know will not feel I am ignoring them. People I don't know will not forever be people I don't know. If they do, or they are, I have failed. Why all this? Because spending any extended period of time alone is a terrible idea, and the more you initiate, the less likely that is to happen.

I have been taking this to heart more and this is a good thing. I do feel a slightly better vibe surrounding me lately. Long may it continue.

4. I will apply myself to my work. Why? Because all career uncertainty aside, if I'm doing something, I must be doing it well, plus it's the only way I will continue to advance in my current career.

I'm having quite an engaging week or two right now. A day where I haven't spent any time reading feeds tells me i've been busy, and that's been happening more. The nature of my work unfortunately means built-in down time, but i'm trying more to use that for planning activities rather than using it as an opportunity to steal time for myself. To be very clear, i've never been particularly bad in this respect. My sense of guilt and shame overrides being a real piss-taker.

5. I will continue to rethink my career inside and outside my current role weekly. Why? Because I don't want to find myself realising I am on a career treadmill and nothing more. I must ensure what I do is meaningful to me, and ideally others. This doesn't inherently necessitate change, just frequent consideration.

I'm in one of my cycles right now, where I don't feel out of place doing what I do. This won't last forever, but as I like this part of the cycle, i'll happily ride it as long as it lasts. The relative clarity of the immediate future I now have is refreshing and i'm enjoying what i'm doing. Next week I regain my 5 hours and diesel money as mentioned previously. Right now this isn't a treadmill. I'm being exposed to plenty of new things and if the next step isn't necessarily clear, it doesn't feel as distant as it has at other times during this year. Once again, this is also partly fueled by my realisation that i'm very lucky to work where I do for this money right now. Perhaps I should give myself credit for not having quit back when I said I wanted to, but I think i'd feel conflicted about that.

6. I will find the time to manage a 3 times a week exercise schedule. Why? Much like the eating, it's about long term health gains and short term physical gain. Lose a little weight. Tone up a bit.

The one big failure of my current set of goals is exercise. I'm getting zero. There hasn't been a year in my life which didn't have a period like this - it's just another cycle that I have trouble breaking. Nonetheless, I really do want to get more, though this becomes increasingly hard as we enter the dark and wet times.

Today ended with snow. Good snow too. I like snow.

2008 #42 - My living room is too small...

...not by much, but a little. I cannot find more than two possible configurations for it. I cannot get any furniture into my bedroom either. Very restricting. If I knew then what I know now i'd have spent £700 on one fairly cheap but reasonable couch rather than a £300 bargain basement three piece suite which simply doesn't fit through doors.

On the bright side, the work thing happened and the result was what I wanted. Ten months of almost getting to the idea of moving to the West Midlands, changing my mind and then starting to think about it again but still being indecisive on have finally paid off. My job is moving to Hinckley. My 80 mile a day round trip becomes under 30. This is big stuff. I will reclaim time and money. Whether I use the time effectively or not, the money side is a big win. The pain of pouring £40 a week into diesel was a killer. It should be more like £50-60 a month when this kicks in, which feels a lot saner, particularly in the current economic climate, although I have to say i'm only feeling a tiny amount of pain so far in that mess. I mentioned the time. The saving is just over an hour a day. My guess is that 30 minutes of it will go to extra sleep, the the other 30 will disappear. We'll see.

So, anyway, I have a shiny new check-list and a slight feeling of having missed something. I started #41 on a Tuesday but didn't complete it until a Sunday. The days after that felt too soon to write again, but now a week later have I not technically missed a week? I guess so. I've always thought I might be a very mild OCD case. Far too sloppy in general to have this in any serious way, I do like complete sets. I think this is also part of aspegers, autism and human nature. It would have been nice to have 52 of these, but I think I already summised that that wouldn't have happened due to the date on which I started. If I fall short of 52 I can still do a recap of the year. My very own clip show.

When I was trying to move that chair a few minutes ago I didn't feel anything, but I have some itchiness in my hands now. I know this feeling. It's fibre-glass. I hate that stuff. What's it doing on the outside of my chair?

Stupid chair. So, this covers everything since the last list. In the case of the earlier goals, way over a week, but about a week for the ones further down.

The 2008 Manifesto

1. I will eat in moderation at all routine meals. The majority of my meals will be essentially healthy. When I snack or overindulge, I will specifically redress the balance later. I will also drink caffeine based drinks in moderation. At the end of a week, if I feel my intake has been too high, the goal has not been met, and I will state this.

I have redeveloped an old weekly fish'n'chip habit. I've kicked this one so many times but it always seems to come back. Most other days I'm doing fine. It's certainly true to say that as long as i'm not buying as I go i'm eating well. My return from Oxford on Sunday morning led me down an early morning bhagi and samosa kick which was followed up by my other redeveloped weekly habit, chips and dip. The Indian food was necessary driving sustainance, and fine, if crappy in quality. The fish'n'chips is a meal, and I do buy the mini, which if it's an option, certainly everybody should be doing as it's still a very solid meal, but the chips and dip are overindulgence that I need to redress. How do I do this? I wrote it without really deciding. Hard to decide how to punish myself. This has taken a turn I didn't anticipate. Okay, here's the deal. If I do chip and dip, I won't do fish'n'chip. Because last week I did both, this week I can do neither. Next week and going forward, just one. Is that enough? It's a start. Caffeine drink moderation going fine. Summary - yes my intake was too high, and this is how I will respond to that.

2. I will not spent extended periods of time focussed on one form of entertainment. If one form of entertainment has consumed an evening or weekend then I have failed. I will vary it, and ensure that I don't neglect the mind expanding.

Varying it nicely. My friend in Japan (who isn't from Japan) has got me into Wordscraper aka Scrabulous this last week and I like it. I'm playing the odd game of poker which is still not going at all well. Being the US fall season theres something worth watching most days at the moment. Partaking in Heroes, Entourage, South Park, American Dad, Family Guy (which is really starting to suck it must be said). The really entertaining thing this week however has been in game form - World Of Goo. I'm not sure when it finally became available, many months after I saw it in a Mahalo Daily game show episode, but there was never any question of me not buying this game, so buy it I did. I'll try to write about that in another post though once i'm a little further on in the game. Trying not to get through it too fast as it prolongs the fun and also contributes towards this goal. That said, WOG is pretty mind expanding, and is likely to get much harder now i'm past the first chapter, so it's quite possible I could overindulge in the game and still take a while to get through it. Pretty inspiring too, escpecially if this thing was really put together by just two guys, which is what I seem to have heard. So, summary - check, all good. I seem to be living for entertaining myself. Is this a problem? Hmmmm.

3. I will talk to people. People I know will not feel I am ignoring them. People I don't know will not forever be people I don't know. If they do, or they are, I have failed. Why all this? Because spending any extended period of time alone is a terrible idea, and the more you initiate, the less likely that is to happen.

I've made a conscious effort to be a bit better at this the last week or so. It's really not very hard and the response is almost always positive. Had a good weekend with a musical trip to Nuneaton and a night out in Oxford involving a in reverse order, a meat market, a rock bar and a gay bar. The meat market was oddly amusing, as I haven't been to one in a few years. Nothing much has changed. The rock bar was cool. Leicester lacks one like this right now. Of the few gay bars i've visited in my life this was my favorite, but that might be because it had live acoustic music. Nice place. More of a gay friendly vibe than the "look at us we're gay" vibe of the few Leicester places I at one time or another I have been dragged into. Have I worded this well enough to leave you in no doubt? Yeah, I think so.

Damn this is taking too long. I thought I got over turning these into essays.

4. I will apply myself to my work. Why? Because all career uncertainty aside, if I'm doing something, I must be doing it well, plus it's the only way I will continue to advance in my current career.

I am trying to do this, really I am, but it's proving a little difficult. For the last few weeks I was juggling balls which I like, but recgonise the inefficiency and therefore ineffectiveness of, but now i'm left with one big ball and a few smaller ones its less exciting. Hmm. I'm not "stealing time" as people like to call it, but I could be a little more applied. Check back next week.

5. I will continue to rethink my career inside and outside my current role weekly. Why? Because I don't want to find myself realising I am on a career treadmill and nothing more. I must ensure what I do is meaningful to me, and ideally others. This doesn't inherently necessitate change, just frequent consideration.

The Hinckley news gives me a good present but makes me think ahead. It's almost a given that eventually my job will decide it has to move somewhere else. This is a nature of the business. Next time i'll have additional expense covered, but i'll still always have to remain prepared to have to move or drive. Hopefully next time i'll feel more like moving. Also a little alarmed at my coding ability. Has 3 years of constant VBA left me dumb? Would be a nice anti-MS or anti-VB story, but no. My syntax and vocab memory of other languages is poor, but my semantic understanding remains strong. It's always beautiful to be able to do the things that the VB6 family just didn't do well in more modern languages. I love VBA for what I can make it do to Excel, because it genuinely impresses people, but it's object model implementation isn't a lot of fun a lot of the time. I tried a bit of primitive AJAX earlier in the week to see just how hard this was. Conclusion seems to be that it's not that hard but somehow i've ballsed up my first real non-stolen attempt to the point where the background httpd request isn't being made, even though the console reports no problems and all code around that statement is being executed. I'll come back to that - it's useful stuff to know, and I can't see being able to talk about having web dev skills anymore without being able to do this stuff. It's not just there because it's flashy - it's a much cleaner way of doing things, if more complicated. It's really quite impressive the way in which it was forged together to suddenly start appearing in browsers one day several years ago.

6. I will find the time to manage a 3 times a week exercise schedule. Why? Much like the eating, it's about long term health gains and short term physical gain. Lose a little weight. Tone up a bit.

I haven't done any specific exercise since I wrote this last Sunday. Doover.

2008 #41 - Reconnecting Day 3 - Post Now Final

Day 1

Reconnecting with the goals? Maybe. Let's see.

1. I will stick to my weekday food and drink ethic as set out previously plus consider the portion size of every meal, cutting back where necessary. Why? Long term I want to be in good health, and short to long term I want to weigh at best less, but certainly not more than I do now.

The portion size is pretty well under control. It may have jumped up a little since I first changed this rule, but I found my meals were getting so small I was feeling a little too hungry later in the evening. I currently have no issue with my meal portions. Last week was a fairly good example of sticking to the workday food ethic. I average about a snack a week now. I'd be lying if I said I had any intention of changing that. I don't want to. If it was an every day thing, it'd be a problem, but it's not. It's a treat to boost my energy. A reward for a good morning's work. The drink ethic has slipped. I started that one because the machines at work show calorie counts of the drinks. Coffee is rather high, although I think that's mostly the milk powder in it. The idea was to stick to two of those a day, and have two teas also, which had a much lower count. At the moment I am finding myself having an extra coffee in the morning, but some days missing a drink in the afternoon, though that's normally tea. I do still have the peppermint teabags but I can't drink the stuff too much or it gets very dull. The extra caffeine intake is actually useful though. For a while I was suffering most days with drivers delirium. I didn't have any genuine near misses but I certainly rumbled over lane boundaries a few times. I am at least more alert with a little more caffeine inside. It may seem like cheating, but I'm going to relax this. The whole rule will be a little more general, focussed on moderation.

To the why: Good long term health and no short or long term weight gain. This I still believe in and I do believe this overall goal, whilst badly written, has contributed to nine months without weight gain.

How do I want to take this one forward?

1. I will eat in moderation at all routine meals. The majority of my meals will be essentially healthy. When I snack or overindulge, I will specifically redress the balance later. I will also drink caffeine based drinks in moderation. At the end of a week, if I feel my intake has been too high, the goal has not been met, and I will state this.

Day 2

What a fucking horrible day. I wake up after a good nights sleep to find some arsehole has broken my entire drives side wing mirror off my car. This cost me £170 and a day on the train people. This of course leads my mind to the possibility that it might be personal, not least because there was some evidence that the other mirror was also hit, but not broken, and it was just my car, nobody elses. It's a helpless feeling. Somebody can do this, no chance of any consequences, too small for insurance but too big to be trivial. Certainly too big to have to do more than once, but what if I wake up to the same sight tomorrow morning? What the fuck can I do? Am I going to have to get into the "must move today" mindset for the cunting second time in two months?

Weighted against certain other problems (not people losing their houses - that's their stupid fault) this perhaps seems trivial, but when half a months rent disappears overnight it's not. I'm not violent by nature but I genuinely feel if I met the guy that did this I would feel compelled to kick the shit out of him. Of course then i'd be a criminal. That said, i'd probably also be called a criminal if I marched him to the cashpoint and forced him to enter his pin to withdraw my losses. Another no win situation.

Best case scenario is nothing more happens and after a short time I forget it happened. Even then, it could still happen any time. Could it even be the bad neighbour back for revenge? I think it highly unlikely, but it's not impossible.

2. I will stick to wasting less weekday time playing fake poker. Why? Because time is precious and as much value as I place in entertainment, too much of one type of entertainment should be avoided.

So anyway what the fuck was goal 2? Poker. This is a stupid goal. If I don't waste time playing fake poker I still waste time doing something else. I set myself this goal purely because I was playing this game far too much, like 5-6 games in a night, which is essentially an entire evening. I don't do this anymore, nor do I feel particularly compelled to play more than once, but if I want to play a second game, particularly after the first went by quickly, why not? For the second day running (actually not running, I didn't do this yesterday), it's about moderation.

What to change? It needs to be about time spent entertaining myself. It needs to not just include playing poker, but any game, and probably time spent watching certain types of TV, though perhaps not all TV, such as news, would be relevant. I said this goal was not to disvalue entertainment, but moderate overindulgence in one type. In other words, don't have day long poker, Lost, Heroes, Repton marathons. I don't. By the way if you know what Repton is you still might not know it's available for the PC now. Look up Superior Interactive and try to ignore what the cool kids need in game play now.

2. I will not spent extended periods of time focussed on one form of entertainment. If one form of entertainment has consumed an evening or weekend then I have failed. I will vary it, and ensure that I don't neglect the mind expanding.

Too douschy? Nar.

3. I will take my camera with me whenever I go, or feel i'm likely to go, somewhere i've never been before but only on a night out if there are more than two people involved. Why? So I have some kind of record of where I've been and the people I've known, liked and loved.

I think I already retired this about a week ago. I have already talked about how the above benefits need to be balanced with not missing acutally just being with people due to being the guy with the camera. I am reasonably happy with the kind of occasions I now choose to take my camera. It doesn't need to be a goal.

4. I will stay in touch with my friends weekly and start trying to initiate some weeknight activities. Why? Because spending any extended period of time alone is a terrible idea, and the more you initiate, the less likely that is to happen.

This one does need to be here and it needs to be better. The reasoning is good, as is the recent jolt I was given for not being more communicative (though in this case there is a mitigating factor of a necessarily unbalanced friendship - don't ask).

I'm actually not terrible at this. It's very rarely I don't see some of my friends weekly, it's just that a lot of the time it's the same ones, and the others get neglected. I can't honestly say I feel compelled to talk to all of them - those that i've not been in the vicinity of for 6-7 years now, which is probably more because I have nothing much to talk about right now than it is about them. As much as I do enjoy hearing what people are doing, it tends to be better than what i'm doing, and can annoy me. This sounds pretty pathetic, because it is, and the outcome of taking this attitude is either I offend them for my hangups or they forget me, unaware of, but still due to my hangups. I almost want to make the goal TALK TO PEOPLE. It would serve the point i'm trying to make to myself well, and it's very actionable. Unfortunately these ones, the ones that require a conscious effort and comfort breaking foray are the ones I've watched myself only pay lip service to over the last 10 months, and I don't think shortening it is going to help matters.

I'm definitely losing the bit about weeknight activities. That's too solutioney, and it tries to attack the problem somewhere downstream of the problem itself. Lets say, the problem is a river dam, so we never actually get anywhere near where we want to be. Hows about:

4. I will talk to people. People I know will not feel I am ignoring them. People I don't know will not forever be people I don't know. If they do, or they are, I have failed. Why all this? Because spending any extended period of time alone is a terrible idea, and the more you initiate, the less likely that is to happen.

Day 3

It's taken me almost the entire week to write this in stages, not through lack of time, more through laziness. It is nice to not have to think about all the goals in one sitting though. Might think about that a bit more.

5. 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. Why? Because some of the best times I've had in the last few years were band/music related, and lack of natural talent doesn't mean I have no ability. What I have, I want to keep using, at very least so as not to lose it.

This most recent iteration of my most creative goal never really gained traction. I started the year wanting to write something each month. I eventually realised that my creative juices, which I always found a weird expression, don't flow that quickly. I found myself wanting to keep working on something existing rather than be forced into something new. To my credit I have three creations which I absolutely love, but against my original goal I appear to have failed. I changed the goal some time ago to what you see above, a very vague goal of spending x amount of time per week. In this I didn't specify what did and didn't count as working on, rather than just playing music. There is no question, now that I really think about it, that I don't spend 2 hours a week with a guitar in my lap, but is that enough? I think so. I continue to strive to improve and I do this through practice. Does it need to be a goal? It's a little sad, but in reality probably not. It's a hobby, i've eventually accepted, and now I feel more this way about it, I find I enjoy it more. I have been known to get angry when I can't play as well as I know i've played in the past, but I don't think I will any more. I already have recordings that I will be able to go back to later in life and say "i wrote that", "i played the rhythm on that" or even "i mixed that". Does this mean I won't ever record again? Not a chance, but it will be recreation, not personal development.

I need to stop being so diverse about potential direction. There is nothing wrong with wanting to do and experience everything, and in that there are millions of far better examples of such behavior than me, a nearly 28 year old guy that has entered precisely three countries in his life. That said, by having the mindset that any of these goal items (save those on weight loss and exercise) could be a future career path seems nuts, but I think it is what i've been doing for the longest time.

This quote has been rattling around in my mind since I finally saw High Fidelity earlier this year: "I guess it made more sense to commit to nothing, keep my options open. And that's suicide. By tiny, tiny increments.". I actually only remebered "options open, that's suicide", the rest fading in my memory, but it absolutely resonates with what I said in the previous paragraph. I cannot continue to say "I don't know what I want to do", and I cannot keep holding myself back from choosing a path out of fear of choosing wrongly, and because it'll mean I won't ever get the opportunity to do something else again.

Music is a passion, an art form and a business, in different measures for different people. For me it's mostly a passion, but i'm going to stop trying to measure how much and just let it be what it is. If I get the opportunity to play with other people again, great. I might even be able to create the opportunity if I really tried, but it's not a priority for me any more.

6. I will continue to work towards my set work goals. Why? Because all career uncertainty aside, if I'm doing something, I'd rather be doing it well, plus it's the only way I will continue to advance in my current career.

This one actually does mean something and this came back to me on Friday afternoon. There is so much wrong with the company I work for, and all big companies. There is so much wrong with smaller companies too, I have no doubt, but I don't experience that personally. I sat and explained to my line manager that my weariness wasn't laziness, just the feeling that I shouldn't be forcing myself to do things I don't want to do or am very uncomfortable with when there's probably somebody else better suited.

A big topic of conversation in recent years has been the cult of the amateur. The notion that everybody can and so really should do everything. In work this translates to everyone being pushed into trying to develop skills that they don't perhaps want or need for the sake of it.

If person A is a natural at skill X and person B has been trained on it but didn't want to be, what was gained in doing the training? They both work for company Y and Y still want A to do X, because A is best at it. B knows roughly how to do X now but it's really not their thing. All X wants to do is play to their strengths, but unfortunately the way to achieve that right now is to acquire skill Z, and Y doesn't want to pay for. Z in my case is some familiarisation with SAP which Y is about to invest millions in, whist X is speaking in front of a room full of school children. I got over my core fear of public speaking (a fate worse that death, statistically, according to Seinfeld over 10 years ago) some time ago, but public speaking isn't something I want to do with any regularity. In this context it has nothing to do with what i'm paid for.

The last few paragraphs are a perfect example of how my mind drifts on work matters. I have so many gripes like this one that I manage to completely forget that i'm well off to be in a job that pays me well. It's been far too easy to think i'm invincible in the company I work for, and I think it's fair to say that compared to a lot of companies, I have higher odds of being able to work there until I retire at 75, but right now is no time to be complacent. If I have to endure a little pain doing things that I don't particularly want to to benefit from being in this job that when applied I am very good at, maybe I should be a little more accepting.

I'm having a very hard time coming up with a development plan at work. This is nothing new but previously I have been willing to, well, lie, agreeing to work towards things I wasn't sure they wanted. This year in being more honest I realised that even when pushed to think about it I'm finding it hard to come up with ideas. Do I aim for the next grade, accepting the management that likely comes with it? Do I aim to be better at my own grade, thus accepting that I won't earn more than I do now? That's hard to swallow, but it's closer to the choice I want to make. The happy medium is doing that in the short term and aim for the next grade more long term...

To achieve this I will have to work harder towards the goals set out. They're quite well thought out and if I meet them I will be doing better in my role. The goal here however shouldn't be limited to the work goals, but the work in general. It's important to me that i'm not wasting my time, and whilst I remain unsure as ever that i'm in the right place, whilst i'm there I simply must be applying myself. I refuse to coast. It will bore the hell out of me.

6. I will apply myself to my work. Why? Because all career uncertainty aside, if I'm doing something, I must be doing it well, plus it's the only way I will continue to advance in my current career.

What's next?

7. I will continue to rethink my career inside and outside my current role weekly. Why? Because in the last year or two I have enjoyed my work less, feel I should be doing something more meaningful to me and others, and don't want to find myself still doing exactly the same thing in five years time.

This has been a pain. Every week I have been asking myself to come up with proof that I have at least thought about my career. If you read some of my more recent weekly posts you'd see at one point I even turned my response to this into a diatribe about the state of the world. This was not the idea, but somehow it became more of a goal to ensure I was using my brain. This is useful too, but it's not the point. What was? Not quite what I wrote when I came up with it, that's for sure.

Have I enjoyed my work less? Sometimes, but not always. Lately i'm fairly happy at work. If anything i'm disappointed with how poorly I seem to be balancing my workload. Is it meaningless? No. This is one of the conclusions I came to when answering to this goal, for which I'm glad. I choose not to get specific, but there is a contribution to a greater good in my work. The company I work for has chosen to become more customer focussed over the last year, which has helped matters a lot, as I think I need to feel a connection to the customer to enjoy my work, and day to day i'm fairly disconnected from them.

Five years time, would it be a bad thing if i'm still doing exactly the same thing? Perhaps, but that's just not going to happen. The organisation is changing, and the work will change with it. Maybe i'll be developing MI for SAP, or maybe the business will decide they don't want to allow that to go on outside of IS. Maybe I'll shift myself into IS. I'm not worried that i'll stagnate presently. This week should provide a turning point, which I'll write about next week. It is, dare I say it, an exciting time. Also turbulent, but the truth is turbulence is more exciting than plain sailing. Hmm. I decided not to say steady water as it would mix plane and boat metaphors, and ended up doing it anyway.

So, the revised version would be...

7. I will continue to rethink my career inside and outside my current role weekly. Why? Because I don't want to find myself realising I am on a career treadmill and nothing more. I must ensure what I do is meaningful to me, and ideally others. This doesn't inherently necessitate change, just frequent consideration.

Last one:

8. I will find the time to manage a 3 times a week exercise schedule. Why? Much like the eating, it's about long term health gains and short term physical gain. Lose a little weight. Tone up a bit.

I was doing quite well for a time. Along with the food and drink goal this one has helped me stay in the same shape this year. Unfortunately this particular cycle I cannot seem to break, and haven't been able to for the longest time. Once in my life I reached a physical peak, having lost the weight from my mid-teenage years when I hit 14 stone. Aged 19 I got back down to 11 stone. 8 years later with only what i'd call minimum effort I am only a stone heavier, and not overweight. I believe I maintain this by being reasonably willing to walk places, but I don't like the shape I have become. Women take on a pear shape and men take on an apple, right? Guess again. I am, I think, becoming a bit of a male pear, and I don't like it.

The problem is partly the effort of exercise, partly the time, partly the convinience and partly the paletability. My lungs don't respond well to intense exercise. It hurts, but that is certainly a fitness thing and could be overcome with regularity. Next excuse. Swimming aside, time isn't really an issue. All cycling takes less time than it feels like it takes. When someone convinced me I needed to cycle 90 minutes to get decent exercise I had real trouble going for so long just because I got so far from home and wondered how it had been under 45 minutes. Convinience is a small issue. Getting the bike out is a bit of a pain. Going to the swimming pool was a bit of a pain, and setting up the weight bench is a pain. None of these are reasons for failure. Paletability is what's killed this goal. It's unpaletable to go cycling on wet roads. It's unpaletable to go back to the same swimming pool and face the same people there each week - I don't know why I feel that way, but I do. The only exercise I didn't find unpaletable was the weights, and I just have no idea why I haven't managed to get back into a routine there.

I said I would manage a 3 times a week schedule of exercise. This really isn't much. A better goal would be not to go a day without some form of exercise, but I know in my heart I won't achieve that with my level of motivation on the act of exercising. I am going to maintain this goal exactly as it was, and hopefully get my performance back to the way it was in the Spring/early Summer period.

The 2008 Manifesto

1. I will eat in moderation at all routine meals. The majority of my meals will be essentially healthy. When I snack or overindulge, I will specifically redress the balance later. I will also drink caffeine based drinks in moderation. At the end of a week, if I feel my intake has been too high, the goal has not been met, and I will state this.

2. I will not spent extended periods of time focussed on one form of entertainment. If one form of entertainment has consumed an evening or weekend then I have failed. I will vary it, and ensure that I don't neglect the mind expanding.

3. I will talk to people. People I know will not feel I am ignoring them. People I don't know will not forever be people I don't know. If they do, or they are, I have failed. Why all this? Because spending any extended period of time alone is a terrible idea, and the more you initiate, the less likely that is to happen.

4. I will apply myself to my work. Why? Because all career uncertainty aside, if I'm doing something, I must be doing it well, plus it's the only way I will continue to advance in my current career.

5. I will continue to rethink my career inside and outside my current role weekly. Why? Because I don't want to find myself realising I am on a career treadmill and nothing more. I must ensure what I do is meaningful to me, and ideally others. This doesn't inherently necessitate change, just frequent consideration.

6. I will find the time to manage a 3 times a week exercise schedule. Why? Much like the eating, it's about long term health gains and short term physical gain. Lose a little weight. Tone up a bit.


--

This must be the longest post I've ever written, and if you read it.. well, you didn't, but I did eventually. I know myself well enough to know i'll read it.

Will these revisions make any difference? Hard to say. I vowed i'd keep this up for the year and I still maintain that. I think I may have trouble forcing myself to continue into next year, but i'll cross that bridge when I come to it. One thing this has achieved is getting me blogging regularly, which was definitely something I wanted to do. If after week 52 I don't want to do this type of weekly post anymore, perhaps I may commit to posting on other topics. After all, the inside of my mind are only so interesting.

2008 #40 - No

Interesting week. This evening I watched Bush almost apologetically talk about the failure of the 700billon splurge thing. Apologetic it seemed towards the people that didn't want it. Desperate to save the people that seem to be saying they don't want to be saved. Desperate to save the people that knowingly participated in the years of madness and probably don't deserve it.

People are far too quick to discount the bail-out because it's for the banks. Why should they prop up the banks? In reality listen to what's being said and it's to create stability for the people of the US. You can ride it that far without much difficulty. This is why both presidential candidates can support the idea though they're supposedly opposites. The easiest argument against is that a failing business should collapse. This is how the market is supposed to work. Propping it up is artificial. The justification for this is that more than just the businesses will collapse. Everybody else's finances will too.

Or will the hardest hit actually be the people that took the most advantage, spending non-existent money on more than they needed and certainly more than they could genuinely justify being able to afford.

I'm not entirely decided on this issue, but as you can see i'm swaying towards the "let it burn" camp. This, however, is a luxury I have, not being American. How i'd feel were I over there, it's harder to say. Thankfully in the UK the government has far less interest in public opinion, and we're already on to the second bank with minimal consultation. Once we add it all up, as often is the case in these UK/US comparisons, we'll find ourselves with a figure around 50% of theirs even though we're about 20% of their size, no doubt.

On to more important matters.

1. I ate well last week. Home cooking from the past Sunday provided 3 meals for the more recent period, all healthy enough. Portion-wise I could stretch this pans worth to another meal, but there has to come a point where I admit I just can't eat the same meal five times in a week. I need to buy some freezer bags. Work food ethic is going well enough. Overall not as good as it's been, but still not bad.

2. I've not played for 3 days now. Rule stands.

3. This rule, as mentioned last week, is done. I will skip no.3 from now on.

4. Went for a night out in Birmingham. Turned into a Snobs type night. My jesus I hate that fucking place. How did anyone convince so many self-absorbed arseholes to walk into one building in one night I have no idea. Subside however is still a very nice place to relax to some metal. Good to see people I rarely see. Seem to have started a war with another friend (or perhaps not) on Facebook. All good. Very high school. I am taking the high road and ignoring it (which is a secret low road cos I hope that pisses her off). I do like people. Just not all of them, and not all of the time.

5. My playing has been improving again over the past week. When the right combination of motivation, pick, string and even hardened fingertips come together I can actually sound pretty good. My singing voice seems to be shit at the moment. I wish I could find some consistency in that area. I almost wish more for that than guitar skill. Do like singing.

6. Getting into my work over the past week. It's been quite interesting. Trying to meet the work goals in doing this, although predictably the real work gets in the way a little. That's not unusual.

7. Most thinking this week has been economic. I have resigned myself to waiting for the clarity we seek at work before deciding how to proceed. I might go back to my early tens plan of moving to the West Midlands, but I'm only luke-warm on the idea.

8. Didn't manage any exercise. Full stop.

Anybody reading this can't fail to notice that my goal reviews have been a bit lacking in focus over the past few weeks. This is partly because it's getting old writing the same stuff, partly because i'm just not doing as much towards them as I should be, and partly because i've lost sight of the purpose of some of them. I promise next week i'll try to do a longer review and get back to the actual points. Not tonight though. Incidentally I suspect I might have a faulty gas appliance. If I never write to this blog again, you can assume it killed me tonight.

Final thought (you know, in case I die): Democracy seems like a crock of shit much of the time and it comes in many flavours and degrees but for a brief period last night a democratically elected representative government appeared to work in the US. People said no, representatives said no, so the answer was no. Watching the anger was refreshing. It almost feels as if something big might be happening.

2008 #39 - Quickie

I have no desire to write much today. A few brief thoughts and facts.

- Dell sent me a Toshiba disk, not a Western Digital as promised. So far though, no clicking.

- My landline stopped working for a while this morning. I realised that I didn't care enough to spend any of my own time getting it fixed. Still glad it started working again though.

- Tuesday appears to be the day I do this now.

1. During the week I ate well. During the weekend I ate better than last weekend. Reasonably well hydrated I managed to weigh in at 12 stone a few mornings ago. Normally that only happens when i'm missing most of my water after a night out!

2. Still trying to get back up there in Poker. Nothing interesting, move along, rule stands.

3. No photographs. I am actually ready to entirely retire this goal now. It no longer serves any purpose or aligns with what I want to be doing with my time. I will consider this before next week.

4. Had a visitor at the weekend, which is rare these days. Am making an effort to talk to people online. This is all well on track at the moment. There are a few people that perhaps i'm avoiding talking to a little, but i'll get over that sooner or later.

5. Been experimenting with various picks after last weeks realisation. Was definitely missing a trick. Also must break the cycle of wearing down picks then continuing to use them for six months. They're not that expensive really. I'm almost ready to get back to recording, but I think i'm going to go back to Audition for a bit, as i'm rather good with that now, whilst Ableton remains confusing.

6. Working on paying more attention to our internal SLAs this week. Feels ridiculous asking people to change little dates in an Excel sheet and more red tapey than I'd like, but it does feel like i'm managing expectations a little more carefully. I have a few interesting things on my plate at present which is keeping me from blowing my brains out.

7. My mind is on money, as are the minds of many people right now. I'm frustrated by the amount I am gaining given how much more I earn than I used to. I could spend less, but there are things I need and want. I find myself thinking i'm fortunate also, because a lack of savings means economic collapse hits me a little less hard. That said, the smart money is on the guy that knows what to do when money becomes either worthless, or hyperinflated to the point of a bread costing hundreds or thoustands of pounds. Right now that's not me, but i'm thinking about it.

8. I went for a ride on Sunday. It was the last nice weekend of the year most likely, so it had to be done. I went exploring the streets of the area that I have been less familiar with, so it wasn't as strenuous as it might have been, but it's better than the recent nothing, and I did not, as I mentioned I might, ignore the issue completely for another week. Where I take this from here i'm not sure. I need to try it in really bad weather.

Not quite as quick as i'd hoped. Out.

My Samsung Hard Drive Failed. Ubuntu sort of saved the day, so i'm here to bitch about it.

I believe on occasion when talking about the laptop I acquired about 5 months ago i've mentioned the occasional clicking and sometimes beeping from the hard drive. I eventually found a thread about this on a forum but like so many threads on a tech topic, it bottomed out before reaching a conclusion. It was something to do with acoustic noise suppression - quieting the drive down for slight performance loss.

Apparently the clicking is a symptom of a bad drive handling this technology, or at least thats as close to an explanation as I could get from Dell. They wouldn't acknowledge it was damaging the drive as it went, but I dunno - those clicks sounded pretty detrimental to me, and somebody else in the said thread did say that it was degrading their drive statistically.

Anyways, I left home to get a haircut mid-afternoon Saturday leaving the laptop switched on, sitting on the bed. When I returned home I saw Vista was reloading itself - you know - the nearly blank screen with the green progress bar (home edition - it might be blue in the version with the wavy grass - I dunno). I just figured MS might have installed some updates then rebooted after a countdown, which i've moaned about before. Five minutes later nothing had changed.

Long story less long, various methods of booting all failed eventually leading me to run the Dell Diagnostics in the BIOS. What we identified were at least 4 bad blocks. This in 8 digit hex code form was enough to convince Dell that it was time to ship me a new drive, which I will have to take another day off work to receive.

The dying drive is a Samsung 320GB model. The replacement will be a Western Digital. I'm very glad about this.

Lifetime drive experience to date:

Quantum - Fail 1
Samsung - Fail 1
Western Digital - Fail 0

Thanks, at least, to to the sheer beauty of compatibility between all SATA drive sizes, I have been able to dangle the tiny laptop drive from a wire in my old desktop and grab the few files of value on the drive, which hasn't yet fallen completely, but obviously will before too long. It's badly enough damaged that it stops XP on that unit booting when connected, but not badly enough that Ubuntu can't handle it.

Which brings me to the beauty of Ubuntu. I am sitting in the seat I normally sit in, on the laptop I normally write on. On the front left of that laptop is a gaping hole where a hard drive should be. Only thanks to Ubuntu is this remotely possible, via the "try before you install" bootable CD based version of the OS.

Ubuntu is a pain in the arse for many things:

- Input. Keyboard can be a nightmare. During this post I have on several occasions ended up with unresponsive keys, shifting focus and strings of one character speeding off to the right, and I know there's nothing wrong with the keyboard itself.

- Input. My trackpad simply doesn't work under Hardy. The pointer flies all over the place registering clicks that simply aren't happening. It worked fine this morning under an older Gutsy CD - now i'm forced to plug in a USB mouse, which works fine. If I wanted to keep using Hardy on this machine, it would be a nightmare.

- GNOME. It's clunky as hell. It's very impressive for free, but the Linux community's long standing inability to accept that open source alone does not solve all problems is.... well, still standing.

- Ease of Configuration. Ubuntu is the most user configurable distribution I've ever used. That said, my previous experiences were the vanilla Debian and Slackware, both of which are known to be less friendly. Nonetheless, if Ubuntu is to become what it by rights should become, it needs to achieve the ease of use of a Mac/Windows, and I said Mac first not because I know much about them, just based on testimony, and the fact that fanboys would scoff that I consider Windows easy to use if I didn't also mention the Mac.

On Vista, which I was using yesterday before the crash I plug in an HDMI cable and instantly have an extended desktop. On Ubuntu, plugging the cable in does nothing. Through a hard to understand panel I manage to get the TV to show the same screen, but extending the desktop - no idea.

On Vista I HATED the fact that most applications didn't let me switch between sound outputs. Most use the default, so we resort to switching the default in the Control Panel. This to me has always seemed terrible, however I created a shortcut to it in the quick launch and now it happens quickly when I want to redirect sound to my TV via HDMI. On Ubuntu I simply can't figure out how to begin doing this, so I don't think i'll be performing my normal ritual of watching TV through the laptop tonight.

Conclusion - Linux is ready to do pretty much everything anybody needs it to, but not without sound understanding. Vista and Leopard both stand tall above Ubuntu. When I bought my laptop I intended to switch it to Ubuntu after trialing Vista for a few days. I only now finally see how much I lose if I try to make do with Ubuntu. When my new drive arrives I will dutifully reinstall Vista.

John C Dvorak often trots out the idea that Linux on the desktop might take off if Adobe released a version of Photoshop for it, but as things stand, it's hard to see how they could build it to work fluidly enough in this nightmare interface. Certainly GIMP is no fun to use. His other idea that Google might buy Ubuntu and create Google Linux... Perhaps, if they threw some interface expertise at it, that might be a good thing. Rebadging this product though, wouldn't get anyone anywhere.

Ubuntu great for letting me use my laptop without a hard drive - really great, but the interface and configurability suck more than I remembered.

2008 #38 - Weight Lifting

Well, it's over. For a few weeks at least, i'm the only person living in this house and I no longer have to worry about being the target of the guy i've been calling a nut this week. I feel different tonight, as if a giant weight had been lifted from my shoulders. I also feel remorse.

I'm not a religious person in any sense of the word. I am unchristened (remind me to talk about people's reaction to that sometime, whoa) and don't have a strong belief in any kind of god, but I can still recognise and try to live by the few good things that certain religions teach. I refer here, to turning the other cheek.

Last night, the night after the night with no sleep, I woke at 4:30am to more banging. 20 minutes later he was at my door. This was unexpected, as the landlord had actually warned him against bothering me again on his last night in the property on punishment of eventual eviction (he can move him immediately, but only end a tenancy with standard notice). Now, I have been scared in this situation, and it has certainly been a rough few days, but given that I think I at least partly understand what's happening with this guy, and the fact that I knew he would be gone from my life today, I regret my reaction.

Filled with my new sense of victory, no longer scared of invasion after figuring out what I could use to defend myself in the flat, In my head I was willing him to come to the door, something which he didn't do on the previous night. The feeling is best described by the phrase "right, now it's my turn". Previous conversations have started in exactly the same way and ended in confusion and a shake of the head as he headed back upstairs. This morning, I yelled at him. For some reason fuelled by his backing off in reaction to my now raised voice, he closes with "relax, you're alright" I closed with "but you're not alright are you, i've had enough, go upstairs, go to sleep, fuck off!"

In the minutes and hours following the conversation I was proud at the speed and relative clarity of my response. By the time he was moving his stuff out (out of sight of me entirely) I felt less good about it, and by the time the landlord returned and we briefly discussed the matter it pretty much hit home that my reaction, if it had any impact, could only negatively influence him.

In my defence, I had just been woken for the third time in 20 minutes, and his yelling from upstairs included the last two words of my sentence. The stress was affecting me - I was shaking like a leaf as I walked to the door and literally shaking like a lawnmower afterwards for about 10 minutes. The difference is, I know what i'm doing, whereas he clearly doesn't, and wasn't willing to accept that his delusion wasn't real, so really all I did was bully him into submission. I didn't reassure him, or reason with him. I didn't take the time to think that given this was definitely the end of the matter, there was nothing to be achieved by making him feel worse.

My insistance that I cannot let this stranger negatively influence my life stands true, but I had already achieved that end by the time I did this. It won't keep me awake, and it's not the worst thing I ever did by a long shot, but it's made today bittersweet, given the weight has been lifted and i'm otherwise much happier.

I often think I have the nice guy curse, but mine is a double curse. I am selfish, and I don't consider others as much as I should, but everybody thinks I'm this nice guy. I have all the fun of being the arsehole that the ladies love but generally exhibiting all the traits which means I get the nice guy brushoff. Result, feel bad about myself at home on my own, and write about it to record it, move past it and stop thinking about it, allowing me to move on to something else, like my goals.

1. A few takeaways got eaten last week. This week planning to not do that so much. I talk of cycles occasionally. If one cycle is definite in my life, it's eating patterns. I will phase between eating well for a while then eating badly for a while. These goals have made the cycles shorter, but i'm not sure they have decreased the frequency of the bad part of the cycle much. Tuna is back in Asda so lunch is back on track.

2. Believe it or not I didn't hit rock bottom in poker. Still not freerolling, but 5-6 losses off broke rather than 1-2 now. I have played some extra games during my last few days off work while dealing with the neighbourly problems. That's okay - the rule is about work nights.

3. Took some photos of my old broken guitar to see if I could get some advice from a local repair guy on the feasibility of fixing and selling. Not bad close-ups I must say.

4. A rather fun weekend. Listened to a song called "This Ones Going to Leave a Bruise" just before leaving the house, a nice and recent LTJ song with the premise that even after all this time, the going out as if you were still 21 actually stands for something, with the crowd of familiar faces that you may or may not know. Flash forward a few hours. I jump up to the DJ's stage to make a request, make it, then attempt a slick descent. Slick it wasn't. Painful, it now is. At the time it didn't hurt at all. So, when I walk home drunk and wake up bruised, i'd like to thank each of you. Doing a little better keeping in touch with people this week overall.

5. Been picking up the acoustic a lot this week. I have learned that I don't place enough importance in the type of pick i'm using. I only recently learned that all these different colours of dunlop picks are of different thicknesses. I always picked my favorite colours! Acoustically i'm far better off with something a bit thinner. I was mislead on this in the past, believing a heavy pick was necessary to get a loud enough sound from the strings/box. Back then, my lack of volume was actually caused by the instrument I was playing. My two newer acoustics could and can make plenty of noise with a light pick.

6. Work goals were reviewed, and mostly similar to past ones, though this time shoehorned to make my very specific role fit my very non-specific job title of project supervisor. I have some new responsibilities to set up some interfaces, which I am dreading in the good way. If there's one think i need at work right now it's to widen my network. Having now reached the top of my grade it could be some time before I get a real terms payrise again, if ever. That's a sobering thought given how quickly my income has risen in the past three years. I can still make effective raises myself - i believe I am 4-5 years from having paid off my student loan, and of course there's always the chance or choice of losing my commute. The raise I have just got is about the amount I spend on fuel in a year. Funny to think about, although irrelevant as i've always had to pay for it anyway. In about a year all my immediate colleagues will finally have to start paying too, and i'll feel just a little less hard done by, even though I personally gain nothing. Tie this back to early on in this post - I am more of an arsehole than you think I am. Fuck this is getting long.

7. After my diatribe last week this will be shorter. I wanna be artistic! It's all I can think at this point is going to get me closer to the meaning I long for. It's not just music. I'd love to design, draw, paint, dance, act, host. Most of those I haven't tried, and those I have tried, results weren't encouraging. I see the art in good code and despise bad code. Elegant algorithms are also artistic, but they don't touch people. A good fast interface and good fast running, people like, but it's a stretch to hope it will touch somebody - influence them enough to rethink things. Some would argue Apple and Jobs do manage this, but there's an enormous scam element to that story - it's more than artistic vs the world at large. It's more like a cult than a company. I will continue on my quest to find something artistic that I do well enough to.. keep doing it. I'll never make any money in this field, i'm guessing. Nobody else does, even the talented.

8. Full fail two weeks running. My mindset isn't even entertaining the possibility of cycling right now for no good reason I can find. I will try to resist the temptation to ignore this for another week. Did the title of this post imply I had been doing some weight lifting? No, I don't believe so.

No long final thoughts this time. You've read enough. Just to say again, if you're ever in a situation where you can turn the other cheek, when there is no risk of any loss to yourself, but risk of harming another in some way, no matter how small - just do it. I didn't, but I wish I had. This post would have been half the length!

It's cool.. but why does it work that way? a.k.a BANG BANG BANG

I'll refrain from writing my weekly update right now as it's too early and i'm fried/wiped. That might in line with new tradition come tomorrow.

Imagine you live below a guy that, all signs say, hears noises/voices that aren't there. Now imagine that this guy believes you are the person making these noises. In the dead of Sunday night, which for a city is incredibly quiet around here, this guy woke me up hour after hour violently banging on his floor/my ceiling.

I'm a night pussy (not like the cat version of a night owl - i mean a coward). There's something different about my mind in the darkness of night that means a guy banging on the floor, banging that I know is wrongly directed right at me, scares the shit out of me.

From all the criminals outside I have an outer door and an inner door protecting me, but there's only one door between me and this guy, and I don't think i'd have any trouble kicking it open. As i've mentioned before, it already rattles from when the same guy kicked it last time.

I think if I had someone with me, the correct male urges (not those, the other ones) would set in and it would be about protecting her. Lying there alone knowing someone is against me and can't be reasoned with (i've tried again and again in the less pussy daytime) I find myself shitting and shaking, creeping around desparately trying not to validate his belief that i'm up to something by being visible and actually awake.

As 6am and light rolled around things started to look less terrifying. He had eventually let up somewhere around 5am and I believe I caught about an hour's sleep, but work was out of the question. Yes, this post is awesomely written but I'd be no good for VBA today.

In the night terror state I made a decision that today would mark (his name is Mark, incidentally) a turning point. Either our landlord would do something decisive to change this, or I will be the one to move.

I have at least a little sympathy for the guy. If he is schizophrenic or similar the behaviour would be somewhat understandable, however I cannot let the mental health problems of somebody I don't know influence my life so negatively in this way. This is why if push comes to shove, I'll have to go through the pain. Realistically it's the only way i'll gain control of the situation. Later today i'll hopefully know what the landlord plans. On the phone he seems to be on my side, but actions speak louder than words, and whilst I appreciate some actions are difficult when tenancy agreements are involved, if I knew the guy had been given X amount of time I could maybe stick it out. I don't see what else the landlord can do, but don't see why he can't do that if he genuinely intends to put the guy on notice. If not, again, I must move, and move fast.

Finding a new let is both easy and hard. What I want is out there but with only minimal detail. I hate setting up appointments to see places which agents seem to see as a big favour to an as yet non-customer. Try letting a place unseen! Most agents also charge extortionate rates for admin and deposit. They'd argue that they provide service where a private landlord might not, but having experienced both I see little difference. I fell out with my last landlord because I insisted on calling her when the agency was unresponsive. This was definitely a fair move, but was met with venom. She paid the agency good money to manage the property to avoid manging it herself, so why is her tennant on the phone? I can see her point. The most obvious question might be why did she give us her number in the first place?

This post was partly about Google so let's drag it back. Having typed "Leicester Lettings" into Google, result one was a group of map pins giving local agents. This is only a recently added feature, at least in the main search, and it's cool.

BUT! Every single time I want to visit an agents website, I click on the name of the agent, and every time I wind up on a "more detail" section from Google listing individual sites under the domain, reviews, photos etc. All I wanted was the main site. For this they have a link saying "Website". I saw it before I wrongly clicked a single name. Intuitively, the human will click the name to visit the site. Counter-intuitively, Google chooses to ask me to select a different link. I have now failed to remmeber to do this seven times - click, back, "Website". Click, back, "Website", and repeat.

Google aren't as good at interfaces as fans believe. There are i'm sure benefits to Google hi-jacking these links. Not sure what though as there are no further ads on the additional page.

2008 #37 - Mind Racer

In the last week my mind has been racing around a million topics. To recall them now would take too long and as you may notice, but probably don't, I'm late yet again, and it still doesn't matter.

1. Largely eating good stuff, interspersed with a little of the bad. Asda have somehow completely stopped stocking their own brand of Tuna in sunflower oil. None in there for what is now the third week. The first week I bought Princes. It costs at least twice as much without exaggeration, and I didn't enjoy the taste. How it can differ I don't understand but it does. Feels tougher. The second week I went for pouches of tuna with dressing/seasoning. I could hardly enjoy the taste of any of the three variants I tried and I flat out couldn't take the smell. I have one left that I know I will never eat. This week I bought a tin of corned beef. As usual I tried to open it and failed, then spent 15 minutes using the wrong tools to break into a steel can, cutting myself twice. I am, however, enjoying the corned beef sandwiches. I do realise they're not as good for me as Tuna. My hope is that stocks will return soon. How can an entire line just disappear like that? I ate a little choc one day at work last week, and my Sunday overeating ritual seems to be back in full effect. Drink-wise i'm enjoying peppermint tea in place of excessive machine coffee and tea. Good on the stomach too. Damn this was supposed to be a quick one.

2. Poker. Am circling the drain as we speak, once again very glad it's not real money. No desire to play more than once a day, if that.

3. No photography in my life this week again. I did say this wouldn't be a regular occurence anymore.

4. Had a slightly different night on Saturday. Boys night out is good but when it's just two it doesn't feel quite the same. Abandoned my favorite rock club in favour of it's undeserving more popular competitor. That sucked, but being in an empty club just isn't fun. Much as i'd like to see this place succeed, it's looking less likely. This has NOTHING to do with my goal of staying in touch with my friends, which frankly could use some attention.

5. Picked up the electric a few times over the course of the week. Felt good. I have finally confirmed that my certainly nutty probably ill door kicking hopefully not going to be around forever upstairs neighbour is a better guitarist than me by quite a stretch. Not much I can do about that. We also at very least both like Rage. So the fuck what. Lots of people like Rage, and Know Your Enemy has been my favorite track for years. If he thinks otherwise, he's wrong! It's weird to think that this is probably someone I may be idealogically similar to, but unfortunately dude, if you kick and partially break my door at 1am cos you're "getting pissed off" about a burning smell which could and i'm sure was a bonfire 3 streets away, we're not going to get along. Jesus didn't I say my mind was racing. Tangent on tangent... Not really sure where to go musically at the moment. Nothing I record sounds good enough. I think I am in need of the good old fashioned three Ps... I don't really put in enough time to improve I guess.

6. Work goals will be reviewed on Friday. Woo hoo.

7. Less thought about life direction this week, and, as I said, more thoughts about everything else. The world, the downturn, the housing market, buying houses, whether buying houses is what they want me to do, whether buying houses is something I want to do, wondering how to handle a landlord that comes across as a great guy but never so far has got around to doing anything he says he'll do (including dealing with the aforementioned door kicker), worrying about tickets getting lost in post (they arrived, Less Than Jake November 10th Rock City!), being pleased that one fish and chip shop does a sensible sized portion at a reasonable price with good chips cos nowhere else does, realising now there are 32GB SDHC cards I could feasibly fit my entire music collection on my N800, rigging my N800 to record audio in case the door kicker decides he wants to have yet another insane conversation in which I am someone other than me, and i'm doing something with paint thinners and cat crap, wondering why I find it so hard to get around to watering plants when it takes so little time, wondering how much longer I can stand the current stagnation at work, wondering how I'd cope under hyperinflation and eventually a bartering system, wondering why Kwik Fit aren't interested in matching anything but their own lowest car insurance price when there are countless better offers and I tell them i'd still be interested in staying, worrying ive missed opportunities even recently to try to forge some kind of personal life, realising I have yet another grands worth of stuff I want to buy, as opposed to need to buy, thinking about wanting to move to a bigger place but not wanting to have to go through the move, wondering if these sofas will ever go out the door they came in through, wondering if i'll ever have a really good sofa, wondering if anybody can really justify needing a sofa as opposed to wanting one, wandering how things are really going in Iraq, Afganistan, Russia and tens of other places that get even less coverage, watching with bitter anger as yet another person utters the phrase "time for a woman" or "time for a black man", watching with bitter anger as seemingly rational people with opinions I respected suddenly dote on Sarah Palin as if she's anything remotely different to the rest, wondering if it's weird or wrong that i'm more aware of US politics than UK politics today, remembering sadly that the kind of freedom the US is gradually losing never existed here in the first place, and perhaps most importantly in this context, wondering what the hell I should be doing to be having a positive influence on some, many, if perhaps not quite all of these things in my life and the lives of others. Yes i'm thinking, but I got sick of thinking about work, just like I got sick of talking about it. This paragraph contains the longest sentence i've ever written, or likely will write, in my entire life.

8. Since my 23 mile bike ride, I haven't done any exercise. Once again it's apparent why people join gyms. There's no damn weather. I will try to get out on my bike this week. I must.

If you actually read 7, thanks.