Got a whole bunch of Artemis Fowl books signed by the author, Eoin Colfer, today. I wish I had brought my "uncorrected proof copy" along though. Apparently, signed copies of these rare ones are worth a few hundred quid. Doh!

Couple of new CDs over ther weekend :-

Man with No Name - Moment of Truth
Yahel - Hallucinate

so those two will be played to death on my DiscMan for weeks to come :-)

Aha! We now have a Title field!

Ignore this bit, just playing with the new toys in Blogger! :-)

Hmm, looks like the Blogger upgrade has fixed my "missing archives" problem too, and now everything is archived monthly rather than weekly (makes the side menu tidier doncha know)

Ooh, they've changed the Blogger interface on me overnight! Shame it comes up with a browser error immediately when you go into it!

Here we are 2 days after payday and already I am overdrawn. I hate bills!

Good news : booked my tickets for my week holiday in Nice

Bad news - not well this morning, with an upset stomach

Managed to get a copy of the new Harry Potter book, so that will keep me busy during the 4½ hours a day I spend commuting to and from work on the train....

PAYDAY!!! w00t!!!

The Metro newspaper in London has a competition on today to win a guitar signed by Eminem - WTF?!? Its not like he's some world famous guitarist

The far-more-sensible Evening Standard is offering the chance to win a luxury apartment in London - definitely gonna have a go at that one, cos commuting sucks.

Did a big sponsored walk at the weekend. Providing that everybody pays me as they have promised, I should have raised £108. Got huge amounts of sunburn in the process though :-(

So American politician's want to be able to destroy PC's that are used to download illegal music? The hell with that, we know how accurate Americans are at finding the right target - just look at all those friendly fire incidents in the last two Gulf Wars!

Doncha just hate the way these alledged servants of the people are in the very-deep money-filled pockets of corporations and other evil empires, such as the RIAA?

Harry Potter and The Order of The Phoenix comes out tomorrow - the whole world seems to be going mad about it. Hopefully I can grab a copy when I eventually get paid. Meanwhile, here's a little teaser...

I say to you all, once again – in the light of Lord Voldemort’s return, we are only as strong as we are united, as weak as we are divided. Lord Voldemort’s gift for spreading discord and enmity is very great. We can fight it only by showing an equally strong bond of friendship and trust.”
So spoke Albus Dumbledore at the end of Harry Potter’s fourth year at Hogwarts. But as Harry enters his fifth year at wizard school, it seems those bonds have never been more sorely tested. Lord Voldemort’s rise has opened a rift in the wizarding world between those who believe the truth about his return, and those who prefer to believe it’s all madness and lies – just more trouble from Harry Potter.

Add this to a host of other worries for Harry…

A Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher with a personality like poisoned honey
A venomous, disgruntled house-elf
Ron as keeper of the Gryffindor Quidditch team
And of course, what every student dreads: end-of-term Ordinary Wizarding Level exams
…and you’d know what Harry faces during the day. But at night it’s even worse, because then he dreams of a single door in a silent corridor. And this door is somehow more terrifying than every other nightmare combined.

In the richest installment yet of J.K. Rowling’s seven-part story, Harry Potter confronts the unreliability of the very government of the magical world, and the impotence of the authorities at Hogwarts.

Despite this (or perhaps because of it) Harry finds depth and strength in his friends, beyond what even he knew; boundless loyalty, and unbearable sacrifice.

Though thick runs the plot (as well as the spine), readers will race through these pages, and leave Hogwarts, like Harry, wishing only for the next train back.

The opening lines of the book...

The hottest day of the summer so far was drawing to a close and a drowsy silence lay over the large, square houses of Privet Drive. ... The only person left outside was a teenage boy who was lying flat on his back...[fades out]

According to The Dodgy Test my past activities could earn me 26.5 years in prison. Ooops!

Tuesday continued to get worse after my earlier note about hating them. Maybe they heard me.... Train took 4 hours to get home again and I lost my keys somewhere. Not 100% sure if I picked them up from my desk at the end of the day, or if I lost them en route home, but either way, I don't have them now.

Lets hope today goes to plan a lot better than yesterday did.

I hate my mobile phone network company. I hate hayfever. I hate Tuesdays.

Go look at some funny pictures while I'm busy hating stuff....

Stupid train company! Train delayed this morning due one of their shoddy engineers leaving stuff behind on the track. However, as we progressed further and further into our journey, the announced reason for the delay changed, until by the time we reached London, it was due to "vandalism". Lying gits! They'll never take the blame for being crap themselves......

Another good weekend with Alison. We got a new phone for her yesterday - the little Samsung A800. Quite a cute little phone, once you;ve got the hang of it.

Went to a barbecue today and started building our float for the Venetian Fete - but there was so much pollen about my hayfever flared up big time. Grrr

Robots need love too

Think of a title, and this guy will make a picture inspired by it. Nice idea!

Decided to change to look of my Windows XP using the excellent Colony theme. Much better!

I feel like crap this morning. Stupid hayfever.

Some french bloke from SAP was asking me for the source code for DeVolution last night. Wonder what he's gonna do with it....

Good news today - Alison's dad is out of hospital, which is a big relief to all concerned. Pneumonia apparently. Let's just hope he takes things easier now.

The usual Wednesday night trip to Wetherspoons tonight with Alison - looking forward to that.

Nothing interesting going on today so I'm not going to put anything here in the blog.

Oops. Dammit. I just did.

I've put on weight, and I'm now the heaviest I've ever been! Ack! Currently tipping the scales at 11st 11lbs (165lbs for you Americans, 74.8kg for the Europeans).

The other change with me today is that, following my optician checkup, my eyesight seems to be getting better - both my glasses and my contact lenses prescriptions have changed to less powerful lenses, which means my eyes won't be working so hard to get me to see. Yay!

Well, another nice weekend over with. Did the "meet the parents" thing this weekend, as well as meeting Alison's sister and brother-in-law (and who could forget the cute little nephew!). All went well, but things were overshadowed by Alison's Dad being taken ill and going into hospital. Hope he gets better soon.

Nice session in the pub today with the guys from work cos one of them turned 30 yesterday. Apart from that, not much has happened today thus far.....

Just got 32.1499% on The Geek Test

Train caught fire this morning! Bah!!! By the time I got re-routed around half of north Kent, it took me 4hrs 15mins to get to work. Bloody trains!!

Tuesday brings us a day off work, to spend in London with Alison, being a tourist wannabe. Went up in the London Eye to get some wonderful panoramic views of the city, pottered around Covent Garden market, had a bit to eat on Tower Bridge, and much more. Good days like this are far too infrequent....

Another Monday morning, and the rain is still going. Alison is back in the country at last (yay!!!) and we'll be catching up tomorrow. Taking the mini PC to work with me today to see if I can get some help getting it to work. More updates when something happens - its still only 6:17am....

Woken by a thunderstorm, but the weather cleared up soon enough for me to go to a barbecue. Drunk a few beers, took Becca's dog for a huge walk. She lives near a big zoo park place so where we walked, you could see Bison, Elephants, African Wild Dogs and some sort of deer