The recent roller coaster ride that has been my life has definatly slowing to a halt recently, which is good.

Today I’ve been working from home. Mainly brushing up on the web-programming skills and doing some tidying up. Oh and some Counter-strike was involved and a leettle bit of tidying up around the house.

Life is returning to chill mode, and that is good.

I’ve been on a bit of a crime spree recently film wise.

First up was The Long Good Friday. Killer plot, Bob Hoskins at his meanest, Charlie from Casualty getting glassed to death. Classic. The whole macho tough guy 70s British crime thing done with intelligence and class.

If you’ve got nearly four hours to spare watch Serigo Leone’s Once upon a time in America. Its his last film and its an absolute cinema classic. Robert De Niro and James Woods putting in the performances of their careers. The plot is tight, and because Leone takes a show not tell approach there are hints of what is going on that are only betrayed by the characters actions and their expressions. It takes in 50 years of organised crime and without wanting to give to much away starts in the 1920s and the street gangs in the jewish ghettos of New York and ends in the 1960s in the halls of power, where the corrupt trades unionists and gangsters who backed them are now in politics. A visual treat of a film that you should watch if you appreciate cinema as a medium in its own right never mind if you are a fan of Gangster movies.

Well I didn’t get the job I went for , Database/Web developer within the School of Medicine at Manchester. I’m a tad grumpy about it, since it would have been a nice leg up on the money front. However I got some cracking feed back. Apparently I did a good application and my interview was good too. At the end of the day it was a close run thing with them only deciding to go with another candidate who had more experience than myself last night (interview was on Monday). So no dishonour or disgrace there.

After the post-feedback grump I’ve been quickly refocusing on my current job. The win-win nature of going for this other job was the knowledge that I’m not fleeing my current job because I hate it or have to due to financial reasons. In fact I quite like my job. There’s lots of good work to be done. In fact in many ways quite a positive outcome, since I know will have the time to finish off the projects I am working on and comfatably round out my skills.

In other news Rach has got an interview at Huddersfield next week 🙂

Leeds hot. Nice and sunny. But hot.

Armed police with big moustaches (is Salvador Dali responsible for the security in this land now?) at the train station. Worrying thoughts, train on time (phew)

Train crawls to Manchester, slows to a stop in outskirts. What’s going on here gov? No idea. 20 mins later find out Truck stopped on line. 10 mins later, conductor getting shirty with passengers. Bus coming to pick us up. No time scale given, so sod it bail out have a short run and catch train.

Arrive at work hot sweaty, pissed off after taking two hours to get to work.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Spent most of yesterday recovering from Geek Trek (more later).

About 2pm started getting my act together and after donning the designer white linen shirt and trousers, which kept me both stylish and cool, headed off to catch the train.

At the train station bumped into nikkyboy, dreadtemujin, Heather,gillywoo glennkenobi and deputy_dug. Spent an anxious fifth teen minutes or so waiting for a train, since several were cancelled/delayed. This was a knock on of Wednesday’s nonsense and both Leeds and York had a larger Police presence than usual.

Got to an obsencely sunny York 20 mins before kick off so jumped across town to the venue. The Merchant’s Adventurer’s Hall was a spenledid venue for the happy day. All oak beams, pictures of men (and women) with beards and starched clothes from ye olden days.

The ceremony was short and sweet, and after a quick photo session it was back inside for the wedding Breakfast. This was a marvellous Lebanese affair, which as a veggy I really liked. Monster radishes and olives. mmmmn olives……

After speeches and a cake made of a mound of profitroles it was downstairs to the reception disco, DJed by Wendyhouse djs nikkyboy,gillywoo & glennkenobi. An excletic mix of beats and music which can only be described as pure cheese was played and some one in the ensemble asked them to turn it down!!. Sat outside in the gardens with our littlerachcat for a while since she had been at work or day (as she has been today, tommorrow all the way up to Wendesday eeck!). As the sun went down watched the bats come out of the hall roof, flying & diving madly for their free lunch of summer insects.

Caught up with a ton up people. Met bitvacuous properly . We’ve met before at my own wedding a year ago, but that was a bit fuzzy. Talked about the joys of cats!

I only danced once in the whole evening, a rather energtic Slam dance to Battlestar Galalttica with the groom. Picture two fat blokes flying through the air. As keefybabe said after wards, “I think I’m slightly sweaty now!”

Then all too soon it was time to go home, so after goodbyes it was back in the car, with Foz and a delightfully drunk Mandy in back, to Leeds.

A great wedding, and one that was highly entertaining.

Here’s to Mr & Mrs Baker!

What did Keef and Matty wear under their kilts?

Five posts in one day, aren’t you lucky bleeders?

Now is as good a time as any to remind you heathens of the eternal joy of Discordianism. (click on the link monkeyman, gowan)

My Eris enrich your day with maxfun and Greyface never catch up with you.

P.S. keefybabe this er Censor lp you lent me aint half good!

Our new car is ace. Rach is happily settling into it and I like the spacyness of it. No more feeling cramped and constricted when I get in the passenger seat.

Rach has decided its a boy car. It has yet to reveal its name, but Rach thinks its something along the lines of ‘Steve’. I suggested that we call it Keef in honour of the fact that we bought it on the day of keefybabe’s infamous stag do. However as Linda pointed out you wouldn’t want to do that since Keef is “clumsy, unreliable and would want to play his own music on the stereo”. So still not sure. Kevin has been suggested. But that seems a bit too corny even for me.

I’m not at work today, or tommorow, or Friday. That’s because I’m at the Institutional Web Management Workshop 2005 , a conference for academic web developers. Its being held at Manchester University, which is a bit sad since I was fancying going somewhere else, but I’m staying overnight to network. I promise not to drink to much beer.

No really.

Bumped into the lovely Linda on the train home from Manchester last night. Had a good natter about life and her upcoming nuptials to keefybabe. Then when we got into Leeds met up with keefybabe and went to Work. which is a strange name for a pub near the trainstation. It was cool to catch up and I’m looking forward to the wedding this weekend 🙂

Well the old Pentinum 3 Rach uses to do her work is playing up. Win 98, never the most stable of beasts is playing up, so my monster machine has moved out of the attic so she can use it to do her dissertation on it.

My inner 15 year old did much stropping about this and it does see the end of the attic as my ivory tower, a retreat from the world and my problems were I could isolate myself from my problems and game. I’m calm almost serene about it now. I see it as a posistive move, becoming more socialble, less dependant on my PC for entertainment. It will allow me to sort out the attic, since I won’t be distracted by my uber gaming machine. This is a job which is long over due. Saying all this I’m moving Rach’s machine upstairs, and reinstalling. What I’m not sure? The technogeek in me thinks Linux, since I’m going to use the machine to write my Roleplaying stuff and do some web design, things that are infinately more creative than playing online shooters. Also I have the little matter of a scenario book I said I would write still outstanding. With Rach concentrating on her dissertation I should use this as an opportunity to put in the hours writting this beast.

Saying this I’ve still got my partition on Monstro (my pc) and blast things up with the best of them when Rach is at work, out or having a lay in. All in the comfort of the lounge 🙂

You might think this another sad and geeky post about computers, but actually it is about a fundamental shift in my attitude. Away from ‘this is mine do not touch” to a more reasonable “hey lets pool resources and make the most of it”.