Who are these people in my user icon and why are they there?

I've always considered myself to have a decent enough (if not downright awesome) immune system. I mostly attribute this to eating stuff off the floor and inhaling people's sneezes to get as richer tapestry of micro-life flowing through my bloodstream as possible. Unphazed by minor ailments; runny noses, coughs, blistering hangovers and grazed knees, I'll soldier on regardless. I hate gentlemen that give us a bad name with their "bloke flu" with a deep and seething passion.

With all this taken into consideration, it'd take something pretty horrific to knock me off my feet and get me waving the white flag.

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GP: So what seems to be the matter?

Me: Well every single gland on my neck has swollen up, my throat is red-raw and practically closed up, my ears and head constantly ache and I get dizzy and nauseous just from standing.

GP: *prods at my neck as one would stab at an out of order lift button* Oh yes... that looks very painful. *PROD PROD PROD*

Me: *Grits teeth and tries to resist the strong urge to give her a K.I.T.C.*

GP: Well it's viral so there's nothing I could give you treatment-wise that would help, possibly glandular fever which we'd need to do a blood test for but you'd likely be recovered by the time the results get back so there's not much point in that either. I would recommend gargling salt water and getting lots of rest and come back next week if it gets any worse. Okay?

Me: Um... alright.

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IS IT JUST ME OR ARE GPs PAID TO PREVENT US GETTING TREATMENT ON THE NHS? AND WHAT IS THEIR FUCKING SICK FASCINATION WITH SALT WATER?

Last July was the last time I was seriously ill. I had a "pionidal sinus" in my back (trust me, you don't want to know, but needless to say it stopped me from going to work, sitting, or lying comfortably and just generally hurt like hell) I was told there was nothing they could do, that I should try soaking it in salt water and come back if it got worse.

What the fuck have I been paying all these hundreds of pound of national insurance for?

Gah.

So needless to say I'm off work at the moment; which is hilarious because my employment with good ol' Rentsmart is officially terminated on Sunday. For those of you that don't know (and also those who don't know OR care hehehe), it's a tough time to be in the business IT rental industry. Not two weeks into the new year it was announced that the bank that funds Rentsmart had put a strict limit on the amount of business it was allowed to do in '09. The end result of this was MASSIVE redundancies; I came in the day after my birthday long-weekend to find directors, managers, senior managers, the MD's PA, all clearing their desks!

Now, they also decided they needed to shed four bodies from our team. I've made it no secret for the last few months that I've not been too happy with my position there. The money's good enough but it's the kind of job that you could (and people have done) stay in for four or more years without getting anywhere. When I found out that if I was one of the 'chosen', not only would I get paid for the month to date work I'd done (3 weeks in January), I'd get an extra month's pay UNTAXED for FREE, and also full JSA and other benefits automatically. Never so willingly has a victim put his neck on the block.

Goodbye arse-hole PC World staff.
Goodbye graveyard shifts.
Hello weekends.
Hello spending time with friends OUTSIDE work.

Not really sure what kind of job to go for next. The public sector is looking increasingly attractive at the moment, especially in terms of job security.

Damn this has ended up pretty long but one final thought...

Thanks to the advice of Alan, my one main aim for this year is to start teaching myself Java (with the intent of going on to study it more seriously in the future). I've been researching various internet resources and am boggled by the amount! (Also differentiating between the good and the bad is problematic) Would anyone be able to recommend any particular sites, or even tomes as a good beginning reference point? <3

In other news; there is no other news.

+'s

Uber new house finally sorted

+ Awesome new housemates (Dom & Dave)

+ Barcelona was par excellence

+ Getting on well at work, underwriting training starts on Monday.

+ Many excursions to Japan on the horizon

+ Found my other pair of glasses meaning I now have a pair for work and a pair for home

+ Finally got my epic Elekk

+ Jim Beam and cherry coke


-'s

- Judy going away in a month

- Many, many ££s spent on holiday and new house

=

Outlook rosy. I think it's safe to say I'm finally making progress in moving my life on after the events of last year and this is the first time I've felt this optimistic in a long while.

Hahahahahah!

Up until today I always thought that QFT meant "Quite Fucking True!"

Px pls

Note to self: Must have a 360 by the time this comes out. *drool*

Well for the first time in what seems like forever I've found myself at a total loose end today. Unless I get uber amounts of overtime at work what with this new underwriting shit, it looks like I'll be getting a lot more free time over the next year or so.

Signed up for WoW free trial.

Yay me.

But I can't help the way I was born!!

I'm not gay.

Isn’t it awesome that pretty much all software applications that we use today still have the classic ‘floppy disk’ symbol to represent the save function? I wonder at what point it will lose it's classic symbolism and people will recognise it simply as the save icon.

I dunno why I think about stuff like this but it's bound to happen since I've spoken to kids recently who have no idea what an audio casette is.

I find it highly amusing that although the IT dept at work have gone to great lengths to ban any and all kinds of website that they deem 'Un-work-related' (and thus amusing/interesting) including livejournal, facebook, and even the BBC news website, they haven't had the foresight to ban any of the most popular web-proxy sites, essentually giving me free access to the entire web.

The bitter irony of all this is that my favourite forum (that I spend a large proportion of my browsing time on at home) has banned the IPs of all these proxy sites. *sigh*

Still unemployed and loving it. I'm aiming to start work again on Monday which is also quite exciting.

What in all ludicrous insanity has MS done to Word 2007!?!?

I hope Bill Gates gets AIDS.

This week I will mainly be making queries using three exclamation marks instead of a question mark.

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Would anyone like to come over for some food later!!!

Gonna have a wee barbecue. Come round about six.

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Being manager of the Queen of Hearts / Cheshire cat for a night was fun, especially the free booze until 8am afterwards XD

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I hate myspace. It is full of bands that want to be Muse or the White Stripes and people who bother to listen to said bands. Think I'm gonna delete my account.

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That's all I have to say today.

Okay, so I joined second life a couple of days ago... whoa, it's awesome!!

Just been spending most of my time flying around looking at stuff so far.

Notable things on my journeys thus far:



First headed to a random newbs bar, put 'where is my mind' by the Pixies on and coaxed everyone into dancing with me! (Wish you'd been there Zoob!)



Was flying round a star-spangled-banner hued replica of the Taj Mahal ( O_o ) when I spotted a giant, steaming 15' poo, complete with equally giant, undigested corn and had to pose for a photo. Glad I didn't run into the beastie that crimped it off!!



Visited 'Linden Village' (the virtual home of all the admins) and got caught in a terrorist bomb attack! This giant fruit jello person and I dived for the nearest cover.

Turns out Stu's on as well; this evening we piloted the starship enterprise and I went to hawaii and played a game of russian roulette with myself (sadly I lost).

Anyone else use SL? It's completely free and only a 30Mb download!

I just saw a dragon chasing a goth girl riding a chocobo. LOL.

Okay... So this crazed criminal mastermind breaks into your house in the middle of the night. He sneaks into your mother's room, overpowers her, ties her to a chair and holds her at gunpoint. Awoken by the commotion, you burst into the room. This is where the criminal lays out his proposal to you. He has his pet pitbull with him and it has a raging boner and seems to like the look of you.
"If you let fluffy [the name of the pitbull] rape you while your mother and i watch and i jack off i won't shoot your mom in the head till she dies. If you don't, i will."
Okay, so that's the situation you're in. However, OBVIOUSLY you're gonna take one for the team... It's your precious mother's life on the line here! That's not the dilemma i'm interested in. What's been befuzzling me is whether or not it constitutes as rape or not? I mean, essentially you don't want it to happen, but in theory you are giving your consent in exchange for your mother's life. Also, there's the question of IF i turned out not to be rape, would the criminal mastermind shoot your mother anyway for not fulfilling your part of the contract? Damn he's ingenious.

This is, of course, all ignoring the fact that under uk law it is IMPOSSIBLE to have consensual sex with an animal. Which technically means that you would be raping fluffy, while his throbbing member was in your botty. That's far to fucked up for me to even think about.

I think i've been watching too much aqua teen.

Yes! Not long now. This is just a first draft, but I'm kinda pleased with it :)

Dunno if Jim and Jay have spread the word yet... if any of the shepherds pie crew want to come down to the phoenix tonight to get some practice with the cdjs/mixing desk, we're meeting at 9pm. I'm gonna be slogging my @ss off to get all my work done by then ^^;

Oh yeah, I'm now officially looking for a new job. I just can't hack being in that kitchen any more. If I wanted to cook and clean for the rest of my life, I'd become a house husband ¬_¬ Thinking about taking the job with EdExcel at the end of this month... nice wage, short term, and close to home. Anyone else thinking of doing that?

I'm 24 on Thursday! In no way trying to undermine Dom's plans, if anyone wants to join me for drinks on Thursday night; meeting at Font bar, 7pm-ish. Saturday night would've been best for me too but I really gotta go home and see my parents this weekend: A) To give them their Christmas presents. B) They're fucking off to Kiwi-land for three months at the end of this one O_o

( Faggy end of year questionnaire )