Me

This is a picture of me when I was a kid, I think I may have been around 10-12 or so.  I was an intrepid mountain climber back then, super fit and nothing could stop me, then I found Beer and Girls and it all went downhill from there…

Me Mountains

I suppose I was quite lucky growing up with such wonderful landscapes all around me, I learnt to hunt and fish and I know what to eat throughout the year in the wilderness, I normally stop off in the corner shop nowadays though.

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Gah!

Just spent five hours driving back home to Wales, I bloody hate the drive with a passion.  Constantly stuck behind old farts doing 40mph when the road demands that you should be doing at least 60mph, winds me up chronically.

Anyhow, I was looking forward to updating all of my applications and firmware on my lappy, plus downloading the firmware for the iPhone, which would more than likely be a few hundred megabytes of downloading, something I can't do with my net connection as it's too slow and would end up costing me a small fortune.  Alas, my mum's modem isn't compatible with Intel based Macs so I can't do it here either!  Bloody Pipex!!!  Supplying substandard cack!!!

If I'd have known I'd have brought my wireless router and set that up, but I'm not going to drive for ten hours just to get some software which I will hopefully be able to download at a friends place… *nudge, nudge*

I was looking forward to playing Simcity on the iPhone too… 

I always feel like I'm going back twenty years when I visit my parents, everything seems so archaic and nothing seems to work, luckily for me I have my mobile dongle and various gadgets to keep me semi-sane for the next few days.

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iPhone Apps

I've had my iPhone a few weeks now, and I've had a chance to play around and download a few applications for it, some were good, most were terrible.  The problem is, there are literally tens of thousands of applications for the iPhone, most of them are trash and I've been ploughing myself through the Apps Store trying to find any of worth.  So far I've found a few gems.

The ones I find myself using the most at the moment are these.  Killer Sudoku by White Nile Systems, I actually paid £2.99 for this one, it does what it says on the tin and I'm very happy with it.

Another I find myself using a lot is Cube Runner, a simple game where you have to tilt the phone from side to side to guide a craft inbetween blocks, very simple, until you try.

I suppose everyone has downloaded the Facebook application, if you haven't, it's worth it.

A great little program is Shazam, an amazing music recognition app, you simply hold your phone next to a speaker when a song is playing and it will tell you what the name of the song is, very handy if you have a memory like a goldfish like me because it stores the information and even gives you the album name, covers etc.  Truly amazing.

Another useful one is Locly, a cool app that lets you know what is around you.  For example it uses the GPS to find out where you are and lists nearby attractions, cafes, shops, pubs, taxi numbers, ATM's, photo's from Flikr, Hotels, Petrol Stations etc… The list goes on and on, very handy for when you are on holiday or working away from home.

Gameswise, I love Touch Physics, a snip at 59p, 30 levels of mind boggling frustration.  All you have to do is move a wheel to a star using any shape your finger can draw, the problem is, there are bloody obstacles in the way. Amazingly addictive.

I'm also looking to download SimCity for the iPhone too, but I can't do that until I download the new 2.2 firmware which I should be able to do when I'm at my parents place over Christmas, it's £5.99 but I loved that game and I can see myself spending hours and hours playing it again.

Those are my top applications at the moment, anyone else got any good ones to share?

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Viral Problems

Here's me thinking I'm dying, that the whole world is about to personally end for me, well, you know what it feels like when you have manflu, it appears that I don't actually have manflu at all, in fact I have a Norovirus.  I have been poisoned!!!!

I went down with the same thing a few weeks ago, took me about a week to get over it, in fact, thinking about it I was in Lancaster at the time, so some dirty bastard up there didn't wash their hands after going to the toilet and served me some food.  So not only were the kebabs tiny and inedible, they also contained traces of contaminated poo!  I can't even begin to describe my utter horror at knowing that I have eaten traces of someone elses poo, it would be bad enough if it was my own! Yuck!!!!

The bad thing about these Noroviruses, they like to hang about and mutate from time to time, hence why I'm having a second bout of sickness, much worse this time round, although I feel much better now.  I sincerely hope I'll be 100% for Christmas dinner, I look forward to it all year!

As some of you know, I used to chef in my younger years and I made a habit of washing my hands after I handled anything, be it vegetables, meat, my own meat, a dog, beer, anything! To think that some dirty bastard didn't bother washing his/her hands after taking a dump, knowing full well that they would be handling food really makes me cross. I've lost a weeks worth of work and now nearly a week of holidays because some filthy bugger couldn't be bothered to take a moment to wash their hands.

No wonder diseases like MRSA and suchlike are so prevalent in the UK when you have lazy dirtbags working here.

I'm thinking back to a documentary I saw about a year ago when I used to have a TV, some investigators visited three or four of the leading fast food places in the UK and found unacceptable levels of dangerous microbes everywhere within their restaurants, from food trays to tables and cutlery. When they approached these well known companies they were horrified and said they would do something about it, but when the investigators went back, only one had done something to resolve the problems, which is damning in itself.  This is one reason why I will only eat KFC over here.

Don't get me wrong, I'm of the school of thought that too much cleanliness is a bad thing, you need a few things floating about to toughen you up, but general sanitation and personal hygiene isn't much to ask for is it?

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Age Old

For the last couple of years many people have thought that I'm much younger than I actually am, a regular Gilbert Grape if you will.  I can't see it myself, I know where all the wrinkles are, I see where the hair has began to grow where it once never did, it's quite disconcerting when you have to start shaving your ears and minding how long your eyebrows are growing, not to mention the nasal hair….

Only a couple of weeks ago I was working with a couple of lads in their early twenties and a lorry driver voted me as the youngest to jump onto his wagon to give him a hand, even though I'm over ten years older than both of them.  I should take it as a compliment I suppose, or perhaps the driver was taking the piss, but even when they all found out what my actual age is, they didn't believe me.  By the way, I'm 34 now.

There have also been times when I've spoken to people on the phone placing orders or arranging meetings with reps, only to meet them at a later date when they expected to find a much older person, one rep expecting to see someone in their fifties, cheers mate.. lol

So it got me thinking, what if I stopped physically ageing from now on, would my psyche change as time wore on?  Would my mind age with more maturity when the physical side of me never changes, is one as integral to the other?  I know a lot of you will argue that of course your mind would grow with what you learn in time, but imagine never growing older than a toddler, without the brain ageing and growing to its fullest potential, I'd expect your intelligence to be limited to that of a four year old and what a child of that age can learn.  Perhaps I'd never learn any more than a typical thirty year old would if I stopped ageing now.

I know, I need to sleep, damn insomnia again……

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Shopping For Breakfast

Since the last time I blogged I have managed to visit Wales with my mate Lee, had Honeychild visit me last weekend, came down with a suspected hangover and found out that my neighbour from hell is opening other peoples Christmas cards in search of cash.

I have been mostly spending my time down the pub as I have no heating in my flat, not even a hot water bottle could cut the mustard with the recent cold spell.

I have also re-discovered that you should never ever go shopping with a woman, or three women.

Let me explain, on Saturdays we usually go into town to dine on a big greasy Full English Breakfast, it sets you up for the day and the resulting fat within your body could keep you nice and warm for a decade.  This little ritual began a little while back with mostly the lads who were drinking the night before but has recently changed to only Lee and I and now a few girls!

I personally don't mind, I much prefer the company of females to hungover men, who constantly fart and burp during the meal, but because it's just before Christmas, the girls insist on walking around town looking for gifts.

Personally, I know exactly what I want when I walk into a shop, I get in there, pay for it, then bugger off.  Simple.

With the girls it's walking into every shop known to man and looking through every product, a half hour shopping trip turns into a four hour endurance obstacle course that Ray Mears would struggle to survive.

Even after we tested one individual the previous week, she failed miserably last Saturday as we had to wait so long for her we couldn't get out of the car park as the barrier machine demanded more money!

What will happen next week is anyones guess….

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Complaining With Effect

Some of you might remember that I had issues with my new neighbour next door, in fact one of my neighbours has already moved out because of the disturbances, so our new neighbour has a 25% kill rate already.

I recently found who owned the flat upstairs and have been in e-mail correspondence with her regarding the issues we have concerns over.  I'm also e-mailing the local Police Inspector and tomorrow I'll be posting letters to my nice neighbours informing them of what is going on.

I'm feeling slightly guilty about it because the noise level has dropped recently, enough for me not to bother complaining, but deep down I know it will not last, I know how these things always pan out.  Although I have spent the best part of the last ten days away from my flat, I'm sure that the problems have continued and that I have just missed the joy of not being able to sleep due to the nuisance caused by a chav girl with no respect for anyone.

I might come across sometimes as a bit of a bully, but in reality I try my best to go with the flow.  Like everyone else, all I want is a quiet life.  So hopefully when everything is put together and as neighbours we complain with alacrity and  a sense of union, the Police will be able to evict this pain in the arse as soon as possible.

I'll hopefully know what the Police will be doing after their meeting on the 15th.  I hope it will be a pro-active result, otherwise the axe will have to come out and I will be chopping through the door shouting "Here's Gwynnie!"

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Back Home Again

Things are now pretty much back to normality around here, I'm back from working away and currently beginning a months holiday which started off with a bang by driving up to North Wales to pay a quick visit to my family.  The only remarkable thing about the trip was that I took Lee with me to while away the boredom.

I don't go back to Wales very often, it's a bitch of a drive, four hours of concentration as all the roads are pretty useless.  It's only 182 miles, which on a motorway I'd expect to take little over two hours to drive, so by taking four hours to complete the journey you can imagine the complexity of the tight bends and mountainous altitudes you have to navigate.

The shitty thing is, I have to do it all again closer to Christmas.

I have also had a death in my fish tank.  My female Convict Blenny died whilst birthing eggs.  She's been with me since I first bought the tank about three/four years ago and she was a beauty.  She was at least a foot long but quite shy compared to her mate.  I wonder how he'll take to the situation of being single now….

I'm also having trouble getting into Blogspot, all I get is a message that my access is denied, so you guys who blog there, I'm sorry but I can't read your stuff at the moment.  My only way around it is to read what I can on Google Reader, but if your settings don't allow me to do so then all I get to read is the title of your post.  I don't know if the situation has arisen due to my ISP blocking me by using some sort of draconian censorship or if it's a Blogspot issue.

I'm also now a proud owner of an iPhone, so I'll more than likely share a few posts on any good iPhone Apps I come across, at the moment my absolute favourite is Killer Sodoku by White Nile Systems.  It's £2.99 in the Apple Apps Store.  It generates new games and has several difficulty levels and a pencil option, in fact as applications go, I think this one is brilliant but I suppose you have to be into Killers to appreciate it.

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Bragging

I don't like people who brag, especially those who actually make up the stories they brag about. Nuff said…

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Nights Away

I'm currently staying at The Lincoln Arms in Dorking, quite an old looking station inn, rough at the edges but with plenty of character.  Not the type of place that most people would like to frequent, but for an oik like me, it's alright.

The food is adequate in that it's hot and there's plenty of it and the beers are to my palate, plus I get £25 a night to pay for food, so life is somewhat quite merry.

But onwards to the reason of this posting, I awoke during the night convinced that someone had awoken me by poking my feet with what felt like a finger or a nose, I disregarded it thinking one of the lads I was sharing a room with was being a tit, but it happened again so I perched myself up only to see that both of the guys were fast asleep.

So I tried to get back to sleep.

What happened next I can only describe as the feeling of a dog or cat scratching its ear quite close to my head, my pillow was shaking and so was my head.  I simply can't explain it any better.

Was it an ethereal pet I never knew I had? Could it have been a silly spook?  Was I dreaming it?

It felt quite real, as real as when little Charlie used to do the same thing next to my head.  Totally weird.

On another note, I have misplaced my wallet, it's not at my house as I had Lee check for me, nice bloke that he is.  I can only hope that it's in my car, otherwise it must have fallen out of my pocket between leaving my house for work or from when I was walking about in the yard before coming over to Surrey.  *sigh*

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