Blogging – how not to do it.

Tired, very tired.

Kai and I celebrated our 3rd anniversary sincewe started dating each other today.  As I said earlier, her present to me was a copy of Command and Conquer 3 – yes I’m a bloke and I’m fairly easy to buy for, either a computer game I don’t own and quite like the look of or something for the kitchen/house. My present to Kai though was a little trickier – well from my point of view at least. I was going to get her some of those wooden 3d puzzles that she seemed to enjoy playing with at a friends house but after a brief chat with her this proved to be a poor choice. So with my thinking cap on, I went off in search of something special for her. Now if you knwo Kai then you may know that for her the greatest gift I have given her to date, other than her laptop is her camera which I got for her Christmas. It struck me as I wandered about that Kai did not have a photo album, so I went for one of those, some 6″x4″ photo quality card paper and a caligraphy pen set. The idea being Kai could take photos on our anniversary, printout the ones she likes, stick em in her new album and then anotate them in pretty script.

So presents out the way we decided that we’d mark the day with a picnic. After some to-ing and fro-ing  we settled on a visit to Wales at the Brecon Beacons Mountain Visitor Centre. So nearly 2 hours later we arrived. We had a fantastic picnic lunch, walked for just over two hours over some stunning scenary, endured the kids whinging about being tired, climbed to the top of a hill at 1203 feet and enjoyed the view even more and then returned to the car. All in all it was a fantastic day and I’d recommend the hikes for everyone. We all had a good day. I’m exhausted now though, I drove about 170 miles in total, walked several miles with Kai and the kids but frankly it was all worth it! Tonight I’m going to relax with a beer and just snuggle with my beloved. Work tomorrow  - joy but with some luck we’ll have some friends over in the evening.

We have it back – we spent near 2-3 hours at the garage this afternoon as when they gave us it back the speedo had stopped working – despite their claims it worked fine when they tested it. I let Kai loose on them. They replaced it the same day and at no cost….

Note: Never piss off Kai, she’ll nail you to the wall faster than I can blink! Damn I love her.

The rest of the day was spent in Asda – getting food for tomorrow’s picnic and me cooking a bbq. Its been gorgeous today – minimum of 20 deg. C, easy. From what I’ve heard of Scotland its not gotten over 13 deg. C. today – poor poor people. This is our 3rd BBQ since mid-March – I do love the climate down here! We’ve stuffed ourselves with food, drank copious amounts of cider, watched Dr Who with the kids and now we’re just wishing our garden fence was solid all the way round and that the kids were away so we could celebrate our anniversary in our backyard

We’ll settle for the family picnic though.

Anyway, hope everyone else has had a reasonable day.

Kai bought me Command and Conquer 3 for an anniversary present and let me loose on it last night. Our brains went into Geek meltdown, 2 Cylon human agents, 1 Lost survivor, 1 Star Wars Refinery Owner, 1 Starship Troopers Leuitenant and 1 Physician off of House and not to mention the story man himself, Cain and well bleh….. throw in Doctor Who tonight and well it may be some days before we recover….

I’ve decided I’d like to compile a list of my favourite quote – I’d quite like you folks to add to this with some of your favourites. So the rules of this…. Your quote can be from any of the following mediums – movie, tv show, song or book, try to include who wrote/said/sang the quote and and if necessary give some sort of context tha relates to it.

I’ll start it off with 2 of my recently found favourite Quotes.

Prince of Wails
Sliders, episode 5 (1.5)

Maximillian Arturo - 

‘The Reason the sun never sets on the British Empire is because God doesn’t trust the British in the dark!’

Terry Pratchett’s Wintersmith

Random Nac Mac Feegle on a boat in the underworld in the middle of a river…

‘We’re right oot in the Styx noo!’

Go on, tell me some of yours… ;)

Why oh why do these classes never finish when they say they will?
I’ve said before that I don’t mind these things, I enjoy learning about the tools that I’ll help use and troubleshoot I just hate it though when we lose 30 minutes due to incompetence as people can not spell the relevant sql commands. Maybe I’m being to harsh but I feel that if you’re on these courses you should have some competency. I’m all for training up people and ensuring they have the skills they need to do their job but I am a follower of the ‘people are born with talents’ school of psychological thought. That you don’t master something just by practicing it, you are born with an innate leaning towards those skills. Yes this niches certain ppl and cubby-holes them but then again Picasso couldn’t make violins and Stradivarius couldn’t paint. That isn’t to say you shouldn’t try and it isn’t to say you must never do something your bad at (but then again if your a talented surgeon you may want to think twice before becoming a porn star or construction worker – not that they aren’t worthwhile jobs, porn stars can be argued to make as valuable a contribution to society as surgeons or construction workers). That is not to say you are born a master at your art, it’s still a skill but you can damn well bet that a person with natural talent will reach higher in their art than someone with no talent after the same amount of practice – chances are they will also complete that practice in a shorter time too. It can take a lifetime to find your talent, some people never do. I’m damn good with computers, bloody awful with languages but I have no idea how good I am at farming – I could grow crops and farm animals like Caine and Abel or I could be the worst disaster to farming since the Christian God flooded the world and forgot to snorkel the animals…. As for being a porn star, well that’s for the women who know me that well to comment on.

So in true poor styling, I’ll answer the question I posed at the start of my post. These classes don’t finish when expected because there are people on it who’s primary strength is not programming. Its not that they are incompetent, despite what I said earlier but merely because they are having to work harder to get the same level of understanding as those of us who have an innate ability to comprehend torrents of technobabble at a high rate of input – you can tell I’m a geek just from that sentence. Due to their lack of innate skill we have to move slower, which – as I’m a person who loves schedules, loves being early or on time and gets downright irritable if I’m even a minute or two late and really hates moving at speeds less than my own. Yes I’m impatient when it comes to my art but the paradoxical thing is I’m as patient as humanly possible. Thank the gods I’m not a social worker, psychiatrist or any other sort of profession where my art is people yet (I do want to be a manager one day…).
In any case if your brain hasn’t melted yet from reading this and you feel like debating the point with me then feel free.

David

Its been another long day down here in Reading, classes took an age and quite often my mind wandered throughout the, day never concentrating on what we were doing for long. This would be a bad thing if I actually was struggling with the course material but despite being ‘away with the faeries’ when it came round to doing coursework based on the lecture and demonstrating that we knew what was going on and how to do the work I still breezed through it and had the work successfully completed in about a quarter of the time of my classmates. I’m not saying that these courses are a waste of the tax-payers money – far from it, I’m a tax payer but never-the-less I do have the impression that these lessons are devised for people with close to no technical aptitudes. Hence why I sailed through it. The qualification for attending these lessons is worth every penny and the work is just interesting enough to be worth learning – this is after all a subject I have never tackled before but aim to do so in my current job, but I could hardly call it challenging. I define my job as challenging, mentally stimulating and overall enjoyable.

Anyway so I was wandering through my head – not a pleasant experience sometimes – minding my own business, peering in through the windows of my imagination and seeing where bits of my mind were exploring and visiting old memory lane. I should point out that I have never found it hard to daydream multiple dreams at once but keeping track of what goes on in any of those dreams is often difficult. I guess I just have a quantum imagination – ie. I can either know where my imagination is or I can know whats going on (or where the dream is going) but not both at the same time. Its odd and very disconcerting sometimes, but I do find it useful for plotting story arcs and metaplot for the rpg’s I run.
Anyway I stopped at a window on an old townhouse on memory lane dating to about 7-8 years ago. In particular towards my first I suppose adult life friends, namely Edith, Rob, Gerald and Mairi. I met these people through Rob as it happens – notably in Black Lion Games in Edinburgh whilst it was based in the basement at Flip. We were just chatting about old Amiga’s as it happens and the conversation moved on to battletech a passion of both mine and robs. Now as it happens Rob was about to run a Werewolf game and he didn’t live far away from my parents so he offered to let me join in. I accpeted. As I recall – and I may be wrong here. That is when I met Mairi, Edith and Gerald. Edith was Robs landlady, Gerald was a kiwi nutball – but a solid bloke and well Mairi, well Mairi was (at that point) Rob’s secret other half (they hadn’t made it public to anyone yet). There were other people there who I got to know but they sadlky didn’t leave as big an impression as those 4. As time grew on My friendship with these 4 grew and aged. Like most friends we fell out over small things, and big things, made up, argued, laughed, cried and hugged. Fast forward when I went to Uni, well Rob had moved away, Mairi had moved on, Gerald was still about but I rarely saw him and Edith, Edith had remained a solid – abeit less seen constant in my life. Fast forward to present day and Rob’s married and has an infant, Edith is engaged, Gerald is in Oz (last we heard, several years ago – I miss the big lug) and Mairi has returned from working in France and is back in Edinburgh last I heard. So much has changed and worryingly I feel so detatched from it all. I’m still in touch with Edith a fair bit and I occaisionally hear from Rob but frankly its all rather – sad to say, distant. I can’t help but wonder what life would be like if we were still all hanging out together, shooting pool in Edinburgh Uni’s union, playing rpgs/boardgames and generally spending time in the pubs. They were good days for me, thats not to say I’m not happy with my life – don’t get me wrong I’m really enjoying my life, but I do miss my old, old friends.

…Awake (just)
…Up (Barely)
…Dressed (looks like it)
…About to go to breakfast (mmmmm cooked breakfast) – staying here is so bad for me!
…Going now (Bye).

So last night I went for a padddle in the hotel pool. I had it all to myself, which was nice. I swam a modest 20 lengths before retiring to the sauna for 15 minutes, again I had this all to myself. Whilst lying there in the sauna, with my eyes closed my mind began to wander – more than usual that is. I won’t discuss what I thought about in this post, some of it is indecent to say the least. Instead I will make a separate posting later which will not be x-posted to lj, you’ll have to visit my blog to read that oneit’ll be password protected but if you know my surname you’ll be able to read it. Lowercase I should add. I’m not posting it like this because I am a prude or because I don’t want ppl to read it but merely because for some ppl it’s tmi and I prefer not to draw too much attention with sensationalist posts.
Anyway after my frollocks in the pool and sauna and a brief visit to the steamroom I retired to my room to drop stuff off and then went for an early supper. Dinner was delectable, if ever any of you are in Reading you must eat at the Novotel. It’s well worth it. I was chatted to by the delightful staff who recognized me from my previous visits. I was given advice on pubs to visit in town and fun things to do. So all in all it was very pleasant.
After my delightful dinner I retreated to my room. I spent the evening playing computer games, watching Battlestar Gallactica and chatting with friends on msn via my phone. Later on Kai and I had a long, honest and heartfelt conversation on the phone. Its hard to believe that on Sunday we’ll have been together for 3 full and busy years. Anyway class is about to start so time for me to go now.

So last night I went card gaming in Eclectic Games in town. I had forgotten how enjoyable nights like that were tbh. A bunch of lads hanging out, playing cards, trading spares, teaching new comers and giving each other advice in between jokes and light, merry conversation. It was enough to make me forget some of my worries, for which I am very greatful for. I did spend a little cash on some of the new set for the WoW ccg (don’t mock it until you’ve tried it…), I played a round with a non-updated deck (which lost messily) and then – in the space of 15 mins threw a new deck together out of the new cards. End result was a deck which won one, lost one and drew on its last game – all against better equipped decks. So I was pretty pleased.
I got back to my hotel for about 1030pm, spoke with Kai, setup my x-box and a dvd and ran myself a nice hot bath. After 5 minutes in said bath, the fire alarm went off. After some swearing and a hurried rush to put some clothes on I fled my room….only to find out in the lobby that it was a false alarm caused by some prat wanting a smoke. Cold, wet and now more than a little honked off I returned to my room. I warmed the bathwater again, soaked for 15-20 mins (I know – women enjoy a nice bath more than me) before phoning Kai once more to say goodnight.

When I eventually awoke at 730am I panic’d, dove out of bed and into a shower, ironed my clothes (not at the same time) and departed my room after restoring the tv to hotel control. I had another delightful breakfast, vowed to go swimming and went to my course at 845am. After a 15min sweaty bus ride I arrived, class started at 930am. Lunch was ok, but not the best I have had here by far. Oh I also got more word on my poor car Looks like we’re going with the weld as a) I can’t afford to replace the gearbox (the warranty co won’t pay for it and in fact almost backed out on paying for the clutch) and b) I need the car back, soon. Kai and I have some special stuff planned this weekend and we really need the car for it. Considering we can’t afford the celebrations I would want for the occaision, a poor man’s picnic will have to do. There are times when I wonder if she would have been better off, financially and socially in Edinburgh with all our friends, I know how much she loves me, and I her but part of that for me has always been about making your decisions based on what would be best for your partner as well as yourself. Don’t get me wrong I love her being here with me, in fact there is no-one else I ‘d rather have but I still worry that the move was the best thing for her and the kids, I do wonder if I am worthy of her too sometimes as she is a great person who, I think deserves much better than I can currently give her. *sigh*

Oh well time to remove the hand stapled to my forehead and get back to work. I’ll post some more tomorrow.

D.