act smiley

Fuchs, na na na na na na, we'll tell you we want you, Fuchs, na na na na na na, we'll tell you we need you, (Kasabian - Club Foot) ?

Quit my job this morning, thought I'd have the notice period to finish training up the new guy, but nope, just as I was about to leave for the day I got put on gardening leave. Ended up feeling really bad about it for the two guys who're going to have to pick everything up on Monday without any notice, and I didn't get to say bye to anyone cause it happened after they'd left the office. Ridiculous, but hey :\

Both are good options but personally, I'd go with the first one - Yeovil isn't very interesting itself, though. Bath is definitely worth visiting and Salisbury is pretty good too (it's quite near Stonehenge so could easily be combined with seeing that). Some traffic advice - Going from Stansted to Oxford, you'll usually save some time by going via Aylesbury. Google maps will tell you to take the M25 then M40 as it's slightly quicker if you do it at 3am, but there's often traffic on the M25 during the day. Also, during the summer the A303 has lots of traffic and there's a roundabout near Stonehenge where huge queues build up heading away from London and towards Stonehenge. Going there on the way back would avoid the worst of it.

Local indie band I happened to catch at the weekend. They're pretty good, but nothing all that special.

I don't think that's a plot hole though, I think its a scientology thing that dying of old age is because people aren't in touch with their body thetans or something isn't it?

Went for a nice walk around the lake. Now covered in mosquito bites

I think I broke my nose on newyears

The sheer amount of spoiler tags on this thread is amusing.

More like "thank god I'm not no-win-no-fee"

Well, to an extent, yes. They'd all say anything, and do pretty much anything but the tories still take decisions that are based on an ideology on the big items but cover it in the same populist fluff to hide it from people like putting a cat's worming tablets in a big piece of chicken or something. Except the cat's tablets aren't there to screw it over, so maybe not the best of analogies.

And yes, it was good. Absurdly polished performance, to the point where the guy I went with was moaning that he'd rather have just stuck the album on, because the crowd were awful and the drinks expensive. Not sure whether its just that it was in London (probably) or the kind of people who like indie-rock, but it wasn't the most friendly of things I've been to.

Metric this time next month, should be good. Can't see much coming up in the meantime unfortunately.

Missed going for a meal with some mates due to my phone running out of battery and me being a dumbass and thinking it was on Thursday instead of Wednesday

Corrupt, maybe not - but "massive ego" was pretty much the cornerstone of the character's personality. If its the same edition I've got (so its the page with Astapor, Yunkai, Valyria etc. on it) then its there for Book 3. For some reason, the ones I've got (2011 editions) haven't got the last map with the Free Cities on it in them until Book 5, even though its a frequently used location in book 4 - so I wouldn't worry about the maps really, they're not exactly well arranged.

Caught SB6 in Guildford on Monday night, and of the new ones, the title track has been pinned in my head since - big hooks and incredibly positive, can't get it out my head...

I really do need to get better at job interviews Oh well, its all practice.

Pretty sure I just failed that. Bet I looked right shifty from not looking into the camera right and all the questions were "tell me what you do" type of stuff rather than "give an example of being good in a team" so I found that a bit dodgy etc. etc.- got the impression by about 2 minutes in that I was just a long shot option to even give the interview to and its not payed off.

So somehow, I've got an interview. How, they didn't just file it under useless-under-pressure or all-talk-on-the-cv-no-brains I don't know, but I've got an interview on Friday. And I'm absolutely terrified. Due to the distance involved its on Skype as its a first interview, so I'm massively paranoid about that, as I've only had regular face-to-face interviews before.I'm also concerned about loads of other bits where I'm just massively rusty & there's a few bits where that could massively come unstuck. Weird, when I found out on Friday I was bouncing all over the place, spent the weekend excitedly trying to prepare and now its sinking in and getting all a bit nervous. Couldn't focus on work today and can't sleep now.

Why have I never heard of this until now?? Anyway, I watched Inception the other night, it was definitely a very good film, and I can see why it was so hyped. Slightly disappointed that they wasted the "you mustn't be afraid to dream a little bigger darling" line on a throwaway moment though - there's a woman at work who's been repeating it constantly since it came out, so I was expecting a great moment rather than just a great line.

Got all cheery first thing when I checked my email and found I'd got through to the online test for a job I'd applied for, did it just now and it was incredibly easy, but I bombed at it. All stuff I'd have been able to do with my eyes closed straight out of uni, but all the stuff I've been doing for the past few years means I've forgotten loads of the basics so I blatantly won't get an interview

Starting to lose patience with my boss The guy who runs this team I'm in now is a really nice guy, but totally oblivious to the glaring cockups some of the team keep making and the massive waste of time that goes on. Its mostly because he never bothers getting anyone to do the preliminary reviews on the work that gets requested - the procedure is meant to be we get given a spec, review it, then either pass it back to the analysts for corrections or add some technical notes and approve it, at which point its meant to get put on the plan for us to do. For small things its often overkill for anyone who knows their stuff, but he keeps giving things a quick glance, seeing if they make vague sense then sending it straight into the plan. Which is forcing us to have to start needless battles with the project managers to get proper specs retrospectively & arguing over whether something is a load of bollocks, whether the timeframes make sense because he's massively underestimated certain parts of things etc etc... Its got ridiculous again (with the previous problem being 2 months of arguing with a project manager because he'd planned in something that was impossible ) in the last few days though - the new guy is starting to get proper work to do. And none of it has been reviewed before he gets it. So at best endless little things keep coming up that are really obvious things for anyone who has been here a while (trying to run things at 23:00 on a system that doesn't run 24hrs isn't going to work, for example) and we then have to go clean up the mess all day - at worst he gets given an open-ended task with the instructions being to do one of many options which doesn't line up to what the customer probably wants, which isn't clearly defined and the spec is basically non-existent , just a "not touching this with a barge pole" type comment from the analyst. Its absolutely absurd, tried spelling it out and just got a "oh, yes, thats what I was talking about earlier when I was saying we need to keep the projects up to date in the system"... which misses the point in ridiculous fashion. Patience really wore thin at that. aaaargh. (yes I know its nonsensical venting) Holiday in 2 weeks though!

The point isn't that its not good - its that its not fun. The A Team for example is a well put together film with a decent plot structure, fairly well realised characters with some decent lines and good acting along with some very entertaining action set-pieces. Its no Oscar winning classic but its great fun to watch. The Expendables didn't have to be a good film, it just had to be an ok film that was fun. It fails at that - the dialog is wooden, most of the attempts at one-liners fail horribly, the action scenes are for the most part disjointed. Its the kind of film you watch expecting braindead entertainment and instead just get braindead.

Saw 'em in Swindon last night and it was absolutely incredible. Probably helped that Martina Topley-Bird had roped in a full band (including a double-bassist/beatboxer, which was a little surreal but brilliant) rather than it just being two people, for her set - it was rather great too.