rather snappish

Ink whore

2007-01-21T20:01:00.000Z

A whole bunch of things have happened since I last posted. Most recently, i.e. since yesterday, I have more tattoos: eight to be precise. Since I never posted about the previous two inkings that means I've had seven new ones since I posted about my first. For a recap, here they all are:

Run that by me again?

2006-10-10T13:44:00.000+01:00

Erin and I were in the supermarket other day and the guy at the checkout said the greatest thing ever. I was buying some wine and when he scanned it he looked and up and said "Are you over eighteen?" I was nonplussed for a second before saying "Uh, yeah. I'm 40 in six weeks".

I know I look younger than I am - people usually take me for about ten years younger - but this was totally new. Excellent!

Nobody likes an overachiever

2006-08-07T21:30:00.000+01:00

So, yet another productive weekend at Snappish Towers. I was on call so I couldn't really go anywhere, like to the movies or into London. I spent an hour or so yesterday evening rearranging the living room so the sofa was closer to the TV - I have a 24" widescreen Sony, which isn't really big enough for the size of the room - and putting the dining table on the other side. Apart from that when I wasn't either asleep, eating or out buying season 5 of The Sopranos and a present for my baby, I spent the entire weekend watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer. 24 episodes - all of season one and half of season two - so you can't say I wasted my time in idle, worthless pursuits. I called Erin in Portland yesterday - we've been married five months as of yesterday - and for some reason she thinks my watching a whole pile of Buffy is the greatest thing ever. Heh, did I marry the right girl, or what?

Another wedding in the family

2006-08-06T02:22:00.000+01:00

It's 2.18am right now which makes it 9.18pm over in the US, where my mother in law is getting married right about now, on a boat somewhere in Maine. I was supposed to be there but with airfares running at over £600 to Boston at this time of year we couldn't afford for both of us to go, so only Erin is there. I'm really sorry I couldn't go. I think my mom-in-law is great and I wanted to be there with Erin, Patrick, David and Maeghan to see her get married.

So anyway, to Kim and Dave, I wish you all the happiness in the world and the best of luck.

I can see your house from here!

2006-04-02T21:32:00.000+01:00

I chanced upon Google Local yesterday. Been having fun finding various landmarks with it. The level of detail on the satellite imagery is impressive in some areas, such as London and other places.

More airmiles!

2006-03-20T13:11:00.000Z

Yay! I'm going to see my baby again. No - better still, I'm going to see my wife! Man, I love that I get to say that :-)

*Does a little dance*

London Heathrow (LHR) To Chicago O'Hare International (ORD)
Airline: UNITED AIRLINES (UA)
Flight Number: UA 929
Departing: 08:00 Thu 20 Apr 2006
Arriving 10:30 Thu 20 Apr 2006
Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) To Rochester (ROC)
Airline: UNITED AIRLINES (UA)
Flight Number: UA 472
Departing: 13:10 Thu 20 Apr 2006
Arriving 15:53 Thu 20 Apr 2006

Rochester (ROC) To Washington Dulles International Apt (IAD)
Airline: UNITED AIRLINES (UA)
Flight Number: UA 7137
Departing: 14:36 Mon 24 Apr 2006
Arriving 15:59 Mon 24 Apr 2006
Washington Dulles International Apt (IAD) To London Heathrow Apt (LHR)
Airline: UNITED AIRLINES (UA)
Flight Number: UA 918
Departing: 17:58 Mon 24 Apr 2006
Arriving 06:20 Tue 25 Apr 2006

So, what did you get up to last week?

2006-03-14T23:06:00.000Z

Once again I find myself apologising for my abject lack of posting. This time I've been quiet almost three months. Part of it is I haven't really had a lot to post about. Well, that's really not true - I could have posted quite a lot about Erin. The real reason is that so much of my spare time not spent sleeping has been occupied with Erin: time spent with her, talking with her on the phone or chatting on IM. So I've had precious little else to talk about other than Erin and I thought I would keep quiet.

That said, I should probably have mentioned that she was here for two weeks at the beginning of the year. She arrived December 30 and we spent New Year together, went up to my parents for a couple of days, during which time she saw York and witnessed her first ever football match (at Newcastle - she claimed to be bad luck when Boro gave away an undeserved 94th minute equaliser, until I pointed out that the last time I saw us get anything there was Boxing Day 1991). Overall it was a great relaxed time, it felt very natural her being here, we are extremely well-suited and it was very hard leaving her at Heathrow on January 14, although a bit easier knowing that I was going to Portland the first full week of March.

It didn't take long before we both came to the conclusion that we wanted more than a standard long-distance relationship. However we couldn't make any plans until we knew the outcome of her application to go and teach English in Japan for a year from the summer. The interview for that did not work out, so we figured we'd think about the summer, or late May to be more accurate.

But we got impatient....

And thanks to the relaxed and civilised requirements for a marriage licence in the State of Maine (photo ID and thirty Yankee dollars) it's possible to bring forward your plans without fuss or warning.

Yes. We got married.

I will save the details for a subsequent post, so without further ado, I present a few pictures from our weddding day, March 6, 2006, of myself and my beautiful bride.

Merry Christmas!

2005-12-24T21:41:00.000Z

Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht,
Alles schläft, einsam wacht
Nur das traute, hochheilige Paar,
Holder Knabe im lockigen Haar
Schlaf in himmlischer Ruh'!
Schlaf in himmlischer Ruh'!

— Franz X. Gruber, December 24, 1818

We will kiss goodnight under a starlit sky

2005-12-19T01:39:00.000Z

Like everyone, I imagine, I have favourite songs. Songs which are meaningful to me for all kinds of reasons; because they remind me of times or places or events. Some songs of course remind you of people. The songs which mean most to people I think are generally those which remind you of the person you love. I'm no exception. There are songs which remind me of my ex and songs which remind me of other girlfriends. And of course there are now songs which make me think of Erin.

In many cases such songs are simple declarations of adoration or longing or loss into which people often read whatever they wish. Dido's song "Don't Leave Home" is an excellent example of this. People commonly miss the point entirely and play it at their weddings, oblivious to the fact that the subject matter is actually drug addiction. The song which makes me think of Erin, "Hollow As A Bone" by the Cowboy Junkies, feels very different to me from most songs which make you think of a person because it's rare for a song both to put into words, save for one line, exactly what you're feeling and to express well a quite adult and complex feeling, that of being smitten with something so that you feel the need grasp it very tightly lest it slip away.

He could not help but hang his eyes
Her beauty held him so
If this was not a state of grace
Then grace he'd never know
I want to yell farewell from a crowded pier
Just me and a thousand goodbyes
The tears will be bittersweet
'cause soon she'll be back my side

If I lost you now
I would feel as hollow as a bone.

Knight in shining armour

2005-12-17T00:49:00.000Z

The thing I love most about the Internet is the opportunities it affords for communication with people you would otherwise never have the chance to meet, to get help and give help. Here's a trivial, but in my opinion, excellent example. This afternoon, thanks to the Internet, I helped someone three and a half thousand miles away find her mobile phone.

I was chatting on MSN Messenger with the fabulous Michelle, Erin's friend from college in Alfred, NY, when she asked me for a favour. She couldn't remember where she had put her mobile phone so she asked if I would call it so she could hear it ring and locate it. A simple thing, right? Everyone's probably called their mobile at some time or other to try and find it. But in this case tricky because Michelle doesn't have a landline. No problem - just use the Internet to get someone on another continent to call it instead. Simple!

I am the one in ten

2005-12-16T10:01:00.000Z

It was our company Christmas party last night. I have no tales of predictable debauchery to share, not least because I did a runner at 11pm. I'd had enough to drink and I had to be compos mentis this morning to run a training session. I was there long to witness two of the sales guys occupying the dancefloor for a few minutes in a rather impressive American Wedding-style dance-off. This cavorting brought to mind the statistic our CEO quoted at the end of the year-end company presentation that afternoon.

He said he had been reading an article in a management magazine which among other things claimed that 10% of employees have had sex in the office. He commented with a grin that as we now have 70 staff this had caused him and our CFO to wonder which were the seven among us. All of us, including of the dancing salesman who went a curious shade of red because everyone was staring at him, had a good giggle at how preposterous this idea was. Later, though, it did occur to me that, umm, I am actually one of the seven... ;-)

Ol' Big Nose puts it rather well

2005-12-07T01:42:00.000Z

On Monday I wished it was Tuesday night
So I could wish for the weekend to come
On Tuesday I wished that the night would pass
So I could call you on the phone
Now a man can spend a lot of time
Wondering what was on Jack Ruby's mind
And time is all I have without you here

From one of my all-time favourite albums. Aye, cheers Bill. God, I miss that girl.

Online ordering is great

2005-12-02T09:53:00.000Z

You can't beat shopping on the Internet. I love buying books, DVDs, CDs etc without ever getting out of bed. Except...... when someone cocks up the order. I've had a book called Easier Fatherland, about life in 21st Century Germany, on order for a few weeks. Got an envelope from my friends at play.com this morning. I thought, that looks suspiciously thin. This was because it contained Star Wars: Clone Wars Adventures volume 1 instead. Cute, but of no interest to me. Sigh.

Arriving on a jet plane

2005-11-30T01:09:00.000Z

Part of me cannot quite believe I got to buy a wonderful girl a transatlantic plane ticket tonight. Part of me cannot quite believe she wants to come here to see me. Part of me cannot quite believe she really likes me. Part of me cannot quite believe any of this has happened. The rest of me just accepts it. All of me cannot wait for her to be here; to meet her at the airport, to hold her, to hug her, most of all to kiss those beautiful lips.

Oh I am what I am,
I'll do what I want, but I can't hide
I won't go, I won't sleep,
I can't breathe, until you're resting here with me
I won't leave, I can't hide,
I cannot be, until you're resting here with me

- Dido, "Here With Me"

All kinds of everything remind me of you

2005-11-23T00:24:00.001Z

(Is This The Way To) Alfred, NY?

2005-11-20T17:55:00.000Z

I am currently sitting in a chair in a university house in upstate New York. I arrived very late last Wednesday night in Rochester, thanks to a delay in excess of two hours on my connecting flight from Chicago to Rochester. This is the first time I've ever been to the United States. I've wanted to come here for twenty years and never got around to it. And yet here I am having booked a flight two weeks before I came, using my last five days' holiday for the year. It's amazing how quickly you get your narrow behind in gear when there's a girl involved. Funny, that. Ah, yes. The Girl. I haven't mentioned her before. She's the primary reason I have posted only once since I got back from Berlin at the beginning of September. I didn't feel I could talk about her because she reads this thing and I didn't want to jinx it.

I met Erin in London on September 9. I knew her from a German music mailing list we're both on. In late July she emailed me to say she was going to be in London in early September for a friend's wedding and the list owner had mentioned I lived fairly locally so did I feel like hanging out while she had spare time. So I met up with her at Oxford Circus and we hung out all day. She needed to buy clothes for the wedding so we did that first and then I gave her a little tour of central London on foot. I had no clue what to expect when I met her. Lots of awkward silences, probably. All I knew was she was a college student in the US, way younger than me, a German major and what she looked like. I had no idea whether we'd get along or find stuff to talk about. As it happens, we got along famously and talked all day about all kinds of everything and when she had to go she said she would be back two days later after the wedding if I wanted to hang out then. So I met her on the Sunday and we just hung out, wandered around central London, went for Chinese food in Soho, saw a movie and sat in Trafalgar Square talking for hours. It was so nice to talk to someone cool and interesting for so long and so naturally. It felt like we had known each other forever, not two days. We wandered around until about 3am and then I drove her back to her friend's flat in Islington since it was a schoolnight and I still had to get my narrow behind back to Reading. It was pretty obvious to both of us that this was the beginning of something really great.

She flew back to America the next day but she beeped me on IM when she got back and we immediately started chatting for hours on end. We missed each other pretty bad. Within a few days she called me - at 2:30am on a Sunday night when I had to be at work for eight! - and so our relationship developed rapidly on the phone as well as by IM. We talked on the phone and with ever greater frequency and length. My phone bill made interesting reading for October. There was a call of six and three quarter hours one weeknight. Just as well it's only 2p/min to call the United States. It quickly became a high priority to come see her, something she assured me she very much wanted too. We needed to confirm the chemistry we both knew was there and felt right from the start. Which of course it is. And so here I am. Friday was my birthday and I can tell you that I have never spent a better birthday than I did this year in a tiny town in upstate New York with a girl who brings to mind the line in the movie Singles: "If I had a personal conversation with God, I would ask Him to create this girl". She is everything I've always wanted.

I have to go back to England tomorrow. This is not something which fills me full of joy at the moment. But I'm going to come back in January, so it's not so bad. We can do this. The world is full of people in happy successful long distance relationships. She has a college radio show with her housemate Friday evenings. This Friday it was me and her on the show because her housemate was away in DC. Among the songs Erin cut out of her playlist for the evening was one I wanted to play for her. So since it bit the dust, here's a little snippet. I love you, honey.

Und wenn ich geh, dann geht nur ein Teil von mir
Und gehst Du, bleibt Deine Wärme hier
Und wenn ich wein, dann weint nur ein Teil von mir,
Und der andere lacht mit Dir

Rumours of my death are greatly exaggerated

2005-10-18T01:55:00.000+01:00

So, where in the blue fuck have you been these last two months, Bubba?

You might very well ask. Well, first of all I went to Berlin for two weeks which was fantastic. Then I came back all refreshed and ready to roll and found myself enduring a nightmare September at work. In between there's been some very cool stuff and some not so cool stuff. It's been a really surreal few weeks since the middle of August. Currently my shit is all apart, as Henry Rollins would say. When it's together again, I'll tell you about it. Soon, I promise. In the meantime, here's a pretty picture of the Brandenburg Gate, icon of Berlin.

Beware of the gators on the greens

2005-08-16T01:26:00.000+01:00

My very good friend Princess Gwendolyn of Bennington lives in southern Florida, land of eternal sunshine (certainly when compared with the frequently dispiriting weather for which England is rightfully famous). I'm not sure she likes living there all that much, judging by her complaints about the hostility of people there and her longing for the relative dramatic changing of seasons encountered in places at latitudes with more temperate climates. At least I sometimes think that to a certain extent, as many of us do who live in the places we do more by accident than design, she sometimes doesn't notice the attractions of such a location.

This idea struck me some years ago when I was reading Notes From A Small Island, Bill Bryson's account of a farewell trip he made around Britain before he moved his family to New England after living in Yorkshire for many years. One of the things which leapt out at me from the pages of this book, apart from the obvious affection he had for this curious little rock off the north-western corner of continental Europe and its curious people, was that for all the complaining we do here about everything in sight (and complaining is almost a national sport here; at least it's something we excel at) was that it took a foreigner - in this case an American - to point out to us Brits that this island is blessed both with a bewildering variety of landscapes, some bleak, some beautiful, and with a people civilised and tolerant, welcoming and polite. It gave me a whole new appreciation for this sometimes beknighted isle.

This notion of not seeing what is before your eyes occurred to me once again last week, which brings me back to Florida. I'm currently reading The Orchid Thief, Susan Orlean's fascinating book about the strange and obsessive collectors of these beguiling plants. Early in the book she launches into an opulently phrased description of the manifold contradictions and polar opposites to be found at every turn in Florida which made me think of Gwen and her resident's-eye view of the state and made me wonder if she would have the same reaction as I did upon reading Notes From A Small Island. Perhaps she will, perhaps she won't.

This week's customer-induced pet hate

2005-07-23T01:56:00.000+01:00

There are, it must be said, copious drawbacks to working in technical support. No one values the work you do, no one says please or thank you, people are as rude as they feel like because they don't grasp the idea that this doesn't incline you to put yourself out to help them, you constantly have to deal with people as dumb as a box of rocks who repeatedly ask the same questions and neither read the documentation you provide nor pay any attention to what you're explaining to them. To name but a few.

When you work for an ISP as I did for five and a half fun-filled years you hear everything. You experience the full gamut of people with so little idea of what they're doing that you marvel that they appeared to have got out of bed on the correct side without braining themselves on the wall; the kind for whom walking and chewing gum simultaneously would appear to present an insurmountable challenge. I once spent 40 minutes trying to get to the bottom of why a customer couldn't see the BBC Education site when I got to the site virtually instantly, even though he was connected to the same network and using the same browser. Eventually I figured out that he had no idea what the address bar in his browser was for, that his only method of reaching any website was to type its URL into the search box which appeared on AOL UK's home page and which was set as his browser default and that because that day AOL couldn't see the site in question, neither could he. Shortly before I joined the company, my so-to-be cow-orker Debi had the following exchange with a certain well-known TV fitness instructor who happened to be a customer of ours:

Debi: "Good morning, I-Way support. How can I help you?"
Mr Motivator*: "I can't get my e-mail."
[twenty-five minutes of increasingly low-level troubleshooting]
Debi: "On the front of your modem, which lights are on?"
Mr Motivator: "None."
Debi: "None?"
Mr Motivator: "None."
Debi: "Is it switched on?"
Mr Motivator: "No. Why? Does it have to be?"

* Yes, that Mr Motivator, the dude in the green lycra suit and baseball cap from TV-AM.

But I digress. The company I now work for doesn't deal with home users and the vast majority of our customers are smart cookies who have very definitely been in the same room as a clue. So I don't have these problems anymore, especially as I deal with the enterprise customers. But still, you get the occasional one where you wonder why they called up in the first place.

Yesterday I took a case where a new customer had called for a piece of fairly basic configuration advice. I called him back, expecting to explain what he needed to do and have the call finished in two minutes, if that. I put the phone down after the fifteen most frustrating minutes of this year. At no point was I permitted to tell the guy anything without being interrupted after six or seven words for him to tell me something neither of interest nor relevance. It took me at least three attempts to say anything. By the time he'd stopped me for the fourth time from answering an additional question he'd just asked I was about three seconds from a career-limiting recommendation that we would make rather more progress if he would please just shut. The. Fuck. Up and let me give him the information he had requested. Honestly, what's with these people?

The thought processes of traffic cops

2005-07-23T01:10:00.000+01:00

I wonder sometimes what goes through the brains of traffic policemen. OK, I know the expression "the brains of traffic policemen" is an oxymoron. But still. Who can tell what these boys are thinking of sometimes? A fortnight ago I was heading up to my parents' place in Teesside; it was late and I was bowling along the M18 a couple of miles before it meets the A1(M). There were some roadworks which meant the outside lane was closed but unusually the speed limit wasn't reduced to 50.

So I was travelling along in the middle lane minding my own business doing sixty or so, passing everything in the left lane, when I was flashed by the car behind. In common with, I suspect, a lot of people, my normal reaction to this is to mutter "fuck you, Tonto, and the BMW you rode up in" and I don't budge, though there is usually nothing so certain as that thirty seconds later there will be another flash of lights. Sometimes I play this game for quite a while before I eventually get bored enough or irritated enough to pull over and let the impatient motherfucker in the BMW (and it usually is a BMW) shoot past and harass the next person in his way.

In this case, I had no interest in pulling over because there was a steady stream of traffic in the left lane and I didn't want to slow down just to accommodate a dickhead in a big car. So when, as sure as day turns to night, the next flash of headlights came I uttered a torrent of epithets not suitable for a family audience and gave him the finger. Which drew an immediate response in the form of flashing blue lights. I sighed "oh, for fuck's sake" and pulled over, whereupon I was passed with considerable urgency by a police Volvo estate and then another police Volvo estate.

Which brings me back to my original question: what are these boys thinking of? If you're a policeman I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you've got a good reason for demanding to be past. But why approach it in the same manner as the average Boss-suited prick in a 5 Series BMW, guaranteed to irk the driver in front and likely to make them dig their heels in and refuse to move? How about putting the blue lights on first, Scooter? That way I know you're a cop and I'll get out of your way. Not rocket science, is it?

Shallow end of the gene pool

2005-06-06T14:04:00.000+01:00

You know how sometimes when you get on a plane, you get to your seat, clap eyes on the incumbent next to you and think "Oh, for fuck's sake. I do not want to be stuck next to that for the next [x] minutes/hours"? Something which, in my experience, almost invariably occurs when the plane is full, thus precluding you from seeking alternate accommodation.

On Saturday evening I boarded my flight to Heathrow at Frankfurt and found my travelling companion was a shell-suited Geordie in a Glasgow Rangers shirt with a Newcastle United baseball cap glued to his skull. Excellent. Three forms of life I least like all rolled into one. Naturally, as if this came as any surprise, this guy turned out to be a moron. Listen, Geordie, even in Newcastle the superlative of "boring" is "most boring", not "most borin'est".

Natural selection at its finest

2005-05-24T19:35:00.000+01:00

As this marvellous story shows, the stupidity of some members of the human race truly knows no bounds. Perhaps it was a failed attempt to win a Darwin Award. Or maybe they were just retards. Who knows?

However, in the interests of full disclosure I have to concede that I once did something just as imbecilic. In my defence, I was only about twelve at the time and my reasoning was impeccable, if fundamentally flawed.

I was messing about with a chemistry set in the garage one afternoon. The little meths burner which came with the set had either been mislaid or the wick had burned away to nothing, so I was burning meths on a little metal dish supplied to mix crystals and suchlike on. It was shortly about to go out when the meths burned out and I couldn't be arsed to go in the house to get some more. So I thought, I'll pour some paraffin out of this can here on the side of the dish - like it was powder or something - and that'll save me getting up. You may possibly have spotted the flaw in my reasoning: not taking into account the small matter of the existing flame's likely interest in this additional fuel. To add interest to this spectacle, the can in question contained not paraffin, but petrol, and was also almost empty.

The resultant confluence of naked flame and a five-litre can of highly combustible fumes came as a interesting surprise to me. There a massive, if somewhat predictable, FWUMP! as the garage doors were blown open and a pool of burning petrol materialised on the floor. My mate from up the street got hit with a bit of said flaming liquid on his leg and ran off screaming, the big girl, thus ensuring an inquest later. It was all a roaring success.

Sadly, even without my mate legging it home, there was no possibility of my not getting busted for this. My mother was in the back room ironing at the time. She dropped the iron when there was an unexpected loud bang as the petrol ignited and the garage doors flew open. She was, for some reason, less than impressed with the results of this experiment. Shortly I found myself confined to my bedroom, attempting to fend off a flurry of furious slaps upside the head. I don't know. Anyone would think there was something wrong with a bit of scientific experimentation.

I am old

2005-05-24T16:17:00.000+01:00

I realised a couple of weeks ago when listening to the excellent new Bruce Springsteen album Devils & Dust that I have been a Bruce fan for twenty years. What the hell? How could this have happened while I wasn't watching? I'm not old enough to have been a fan of anyone for twenty years, especially not starting at the age of eighteen. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not! Oh fuck. Yes, I am.

Another reason I'm glad to live in the free world...

2005-05-18T16:09:00.000+01:00

...and not in the Orwellian nightmare into which George W. Bush and his cronies are rapidly converting the proud nation formerly known as the Land of the Brave and the Home of the Free.

If you are American and this does not scare the living shit out of you, then I recommend that you try exchanging whatever medication you're on for black, unsugared coffee, start listening to Henry Rollins and Steve Earle and get mad real quick. Because if you don't adopt Henry's mantra and shout "Not on my watch!", you can't complain when the grim reality of the systematic dismantling of the freedoms your nation has been proud of for two hundred years hits you full in the face.

Over here in the United Kingdom, our government is trying to impose something similar but because they cannot railroad such legislation through Parliament without debate the way this is happening in America, we get the opportunity to tell Grinning Tony to bite our collective black, white and brown arses.

Just call me Alan Titchmarsh

2005-04-25T18:49:00.000+01:00

I was wandering around Homebase a few weeks ago, idly looking at houseplants among other things. Since I like a bit of greenery about the place I thought it was time to introduce a bit of foliage into the house, and with that in mind I selected a bunch of plants and some pots. When I got home I thought it would make far more sense to bring them to work so I could see them all day. Not to mention the fact that my desk needed brightening up. Since then the number has multiplied and I have quite the little desktop garden flourishing, as you can see. I even have a poncy little watering can in my desk drawer. The best thing is this little forest is not taking up any space I would otherwise be using. My next project is to try and figure out how to rig up hanging baskets suspended from the partition....