No rest for the evil and unpleasant

God I wish I could get a break. Some small respite with a holiday somewhere... bleurgh... I fly home from Seattle on Friday, only to fly back again on the following Tuesday. So I'll land saturday, get 2 days to move my stuff, and then im back here again.... until March!

Not that im complaining but I'm starting to spend more time here than home. That's 3 days out of 2 months in the UK. Company should really pull it's finger out and just move me out here, trouble is money and the right package.

Oh well.. still the work itself is pretty exciting and my social life has picked up hugely. I'm being auctioned off to mad spinsters at some point for cash. I'm sure somebody will give $5 for me.. downside is it'll probably be somebody wanting to either experiment on bits of me (and not in a fun way). Mind you I'm guessing science could learn plenty about the effects of prolonged exposure to Grandenonfatquadcinamondolcelattewithnocream (my daily coffee order at sszzzzbccts).

Having a night in the hotel tonight, my back is beginning to really kill me, need another deep tissue massage from mad hawaiin guy who pummelled the crap out of me on Saturday. Lost at pool to a belgian last night..

It was Tuesday today.. three conference calls got cancelled, I was late for a meeting and I accidentally bought an album from itunes twice.

Me: business consultant by day, anti-hero by night!

Recent events are causing my total collapse into my own insular hell. Amazingly these are mostly disconnected from the homeless/singledom witterings the blog has become used to but linked to a far older pain (4 years older in fact) that's surfaced again to cause havoc and hell. So, I've chosen, on suggestion from m'colleague to become "Scorn Man".

I'll develop new anti-hero powers which will allow me to make romantic couples explode at up to 8ft away with a single glare! Content and happy passers by within a few feet will suffer near fatal heart attacks and be forced to re-evaluate the priorities in their lives, realising they werent content at all.. just lazy! Likely I'll develop some aversions as well.. the colour pink will probably cause rages. Allergic to February 14th, general hapiness, the laughter of children and any adults using baby talk when addressing EACH OTHER rather than the child.

Bleurggh. The world will feel my pain. I will rend theee........

......... see if I dont!

Gah! I'm back to being a vogon again. Bugger.

Still, I have one last act of revenge not yet conducted that will lead to the loss of my soul, so we'll keep that one for tomorrow (it's Tuesday).

Burton Vapaaaaaaaaaaaaaarggggggggh!!!

This afternoon died off completely about 3:30ish.. colleague vanished off IM early on, my meetings on campus were all cancelled, my work was up to date.. and Snoqualmie has night skiing and is only 45minutes away...

I thought "what the hell" and trotted off up there, aiming to just get an hour or so's quiet boarding in. And it was QUIET. Talk about dead.. must have been only about 10 people up there! Got a snowboard buddy almost straight away by accident (we boarded into each other). Girl called Amy who was up there with her hubby to be, but he'd been a wuss and called it a day early.

But... I did get a go on the brand new Burton Vapor snowboard. I know what im doing these days on a board, and it seems really weird not boarding with my ex, Vicky. But anyway.. the vapor.

Terrifying. Unbelievably fast, unbelievably light, and if I ever ever have a hope in hell of knowing what im doing with it, im going to have to do jump lessons.. ate so much air and as a result so much snow that it's not even funny. But.. on one particular stretch got that thing going soooo fast and finished with a huge grin on my face. Normal hire fee for it, but $100 down as a deposit (it's a $900 board!).

And another problem.. I would blame the board for the now already chronic ache in my legs, but I think im just plain unfit! Curses.

Gym time!

Pics of boarding adventures to follow (as soon as I figure out how to get them off my phone!)

Bath.. massage... soooooth legs..

Congratulations!

Death, horror, carnage, terror and outright despair have been absent for the small furry mammals of Britains roads since I got out here.. well at least from my swerving antics to collide with rabbits and other scared rodents...

But nature has sorted itself out and Nita has passed her driving test at last.

I expect to hear of weekly rabbit quota filling... 5 a week!

But I only came to give a talk.....

I'm still here! Still in Seattle... not made it home yet, and just been extended by a further week. A whole month in a hotel. Dreadful.

But on the plus side, there's been some fantastic parties, good times, a great play-off in which the Seahawks totally took apart the Panthers! Felt quite sorry for them at one point, they were so outclassed!

I've realised I do actually have far more of a social life over here than at home! So here's some pictures of me having a jolly spiffing time with my new yankee chums!

Meanwhile 4700 miles away.....

Yes that's right. I'm back! Back to the place that kicked this whole blogging malarky off. I've actually already been back in Seattle for a week already but been too busy with work and the odd bit of fun to actually be able to post anything.

It's actually really great to be back, more so because of circle of friends now properly developed. Last night was the regular "Snowball" party organised anually by one the girls we work with here. Bloody marvellous night of drinking (including deadly Jello shots which almost finished off m'colleague!), then some bowling which started off really well for me then went downhill appaulingly fast! Back to Hector's in Kirkland for more drinking and general revelry then m'colleague and I went our seperate ways, he remained in Hector's (god knows what he got up to), and I moved onto another bar with a couple of friends for more chats, drinks and eventually a lift back to the hotel.

Today, waking up stonkingly hung over with my brain trying to leave my head through my ears, I decided that I needed to get some fresh air, and a bit of the outdoors. I've posted previously on Snoqualmie Falls, a huge waterfall only about 30 minutes drive from Bellevue which is where I am right now. I caught a clip of it on TV the other day and decided that a re-visit was required. Seattle has been close to breaking it's record for most days of straight rainfall. Today would have been the 28th day but finally they got some clear weather! But all this rain means more water, and the falls were really really thundering. Even though the viewing platform is well over a 100 feet above the river, the cloud of spray and vapour from the water absolutely soaked us. But I got a few photos off anyway!

Because we'd got bored of large thundering waterfalls by about 3pm I said I wanted to check out Seattle's most local ski resort, Snoqualmie Pass which was only a short drive from the falls. Another 30 minutes of me going "ooooh" and "aaaah" at the fantastic snow covered wonderland that has taken over from the lush green forests and mountains I got used to living out here in Summer. The resort is lovely, it's a bit small but perrrfect snow!! Very very cool. The snow on the slopes was exactly the same consistency as Icing Sugar!! So, scoped out season ticket prices (very reasonable, $300-$400!), equipment hire etc. Likely we'll partake in some late afternoon boarding on Wednesday before we leave.

This evening we've been downtown to Seattle's best restaurant, El Goucho. I'm fortunate enough to have eaten there before and was hugely impressed with the quality of the food, and tonight was no different. Had great company, and a huge dinner, closely followed by a huge bill!

Ah well.. life's too short.

One things for sure. This place really is something else. The rain was beginning to get to me, but just that short drive through the snow covered mountains boosted me considerably, and the fact I know how lovely this place is in summer.

Right, look at the pretty pictures.. i'm going to bed!

It's Alive!!! It's Alive!!!!

Well, an afternoon of working from home and my PC has returned to the land of the living. Reinstalled XP as a second copy on the machine (thank god there was enough disk space!), once the fresh copy was working plugged in my external USB hard drive and copied my stuff over. Then wiped clean and started again.

At the moment it's running Windows Update.. download number 12 of 42. Why on earth Microsoft didnt decide to just bundle all of the security updates into one handy pack that I could install.. instead I have to go through all the major releases, including service pack 2 since XP SP1a!!

I hate progress bars.

Ding Dong the pc's dead!

Useless b*stard fecking device.
This afternoon, after using my PC all day working from home, I installed some tools for my phone, which required a restart. Upon restarting my PC decided to arrive back at the windows prompt, and immediately reboot. Useful. So i powered the thing off completely, only to have my tempremental demonic hard drive refuse to spin back up again. I've toilled for hours this evening over this thing. The problem started at about 6pm, it's now 12:42am and I really cant cope anymore.

Presently, when booting in safemode we see that as soon as the PC hits MUP.sys it immediately hangs. If allowed to try and reach windows, it reboots immediately. Furtling round on the internet revealed I've stumbled on the mother of all failures. Now I've been through everything suggested on various forums, from resetting the CMOS to swearing a lot at it and calling it names. To top it all off it's forgotten what a USB keyboard is as well, so now I cant even get to the BIOS setup screen! Tomorrow afternoon (I have to be in the office in the morning). I will be attempting to install a second copy of XP over the top of the last one, in the hope that at least that will work. It's the only way I can get data off it!

If none of that works I'll be drawing chalk pentagrams and cutting virgins heads off in a move of blind optimism and desperation to fix the problem. My PC is currently about as much use as an original Royal typewriter. Actually scratch that, the Royal is better, you can still write letters on it, and it doesnt make whirring noises when it's not being used.

I actually have a theory that it's somehow found out it's getting replaced in february. Although that plan may now be shafted because my dad was going to have this PC. Bugger.

Why me? I mean what did I do to deserve spontaneous PC death. Oh wait a second.. aaahhhaaaa............

.... First Tuesday of 2006!!
They're bloody after me.. this is some kind of opening gesture "Ha! 2006 and you're still going to have to put up with Tuesdays!"

That's it im inventing a new calendar. Tuesday is abolished in it's place we'll have umm..

Bogday? Jamday? Certainlynotasbadastuesdayday? Notday (actually that's technically night).. have to give that one some thought,

Aeria Gloris

Isnt that just the prettiest combination of words!? Aeria Gloris.
It's the operatic bit from the opening of Ghost In the Shell : Stand Alone Complex, which im very into right now.. and that opening theme tune is absolutely stunning.

The composer is one Yoko Kanno, who's done loads of anime, including the soundtrack to Cowboy Beebop which I also like (western in space!). Inner Universe, the opening title music is just lovely.. heartily recommend either looking it up, or if you dont mind a bit of anime look up Stand Alone Complex, very rewarding especially if you like William Gibson.

Anyway.. it's 2:31am, I cant sleep and I have to work tomorrow. Groan.

Likely I'll be working from home. Spent all of this evening setting up my PC, which is being a temperamental little b*stard by only letting the hard drive work every so often (you can feel it wobble in your hand as the motors go horribly wrong inside and fail to spin up!).

Well it's days are numbered, and as soon as I return from the states (on business) I'll be taking delivery of a shiny black Alienware Area 51 7500 SLI. :)