BandSox

Well my holiday has whizzed by its already Friday early morning and tomorrow I'm servicing my car and doing a few other tasks. I have hardly achieved anything I wanted too this week though it has ben really nice to have time just to chill out.
It would have ben nice to catch up with some people like Ali H and Ali B but I dont think that will happen now.
Its pouring down outside and I have just seen another sandbox gig which was actually pretty mega they played around with the make up of a few of the songs. Also good but ear splitting were 52 teenagers, and the headliners were ok.

Actually spoke to rigini and emily tonight usually miss the band as they are busy with other things, emily was interesting as alwaystalkng about achtechture, i find it fashinating to meet peopel with interests as I cant usually spend more than a few hours on something before becoming bored unless its a game like CIV of course ;-)

Today was notable for my 10 year bond finaly paying up what a waste of time I could have made more with the money sat in my ING account oh well I added the fund to my UK all share tracker and all I can say is GO UK equities!

Seriously I wonder if I will ever find a way to make enough cash to be self sufficent, tongith Phil and I called into tesco to see if we could pik up a pre release xbox 360 as they are so limited they are selling on ebay for upto 500 pounds. Unfortunatly tescos did some sort of raffle thign for the 9 units they had. Oh well better look next time I guess at least we were looking out for ways to generate cash.

I am aching like a bitch now my online trainer gave me a silly program today spent about 2 hours at the gym and at a few points had to take 5 minutes out as what i was dong was so hard I lied to be pushed but I am not sure this isnt too much oh well the results will out and this time next year I will ither be thinner of fatter or more well built we shall see.

Anyway I am up early to take my car for a service so goodnight all.

Van Hunting

Somehow last night I was talked into going van hunting with Nick, not that I am some expert in vans or anything, however by dint of owning diesel I know more than him. Ironically Nicks modeo actually decided to Die this morning so I spent the whole day ferrying him around from one sales court to the next. Fortunatly the sat nav was working so we managed to find them all ok.
There were ome real dogs out there but eventually we found a dealer of HGV who took us to GE captials rental disposal yard faced with hundred of vans of all sizes we were a little spolit for choice. Eventually we found a fairly decent Astra Diesel 1.7tdi its a 53 reg with 40k on th clock runs really well and recetnly serviced.
Carrying on the subject wiith Nick finally sorted out the ebay moneys so I am no longer in debt to him hurrah.

Bottle of blues

Its not often I writie a blog on the same night as it happens most often I make bleve its the same night and tell things as they were well tonight its all real.
I am currently drunk having been out with Ian and Faye nad Clair, ill regret saying this but Cliar is lovely, how ironic that whle I write this supertramp breakfast in america is playing. Tonight Philipa said " i just think sometimes i think you hide from the world" perhaps she is right or maybe I am just not made for the world it certainly feels that way to me like I just dont fit in anywhere im not sure anyone will ever desire me. Tonight Faye Ian and I were alking about our Australia trip and thats what 18 months ago and yet I am no nearer a relationship that I was when I went out there perhpaps my natural state is to be alone I certainly dont seem to gel wit the women i meet. PROVE YOURSELF as radiohead would say.
As I walked home tonight I remembered Laura and Hannah Kay and Ed what if I had never chaged carried on moking pot and hanging out where would I be now would I be happier? Would I have ever got with laura? I still think of her as some unatainable object and yet I know there were times if I had understood then I could have made a move, would I be happy now who knows perhaps I am not meant to be?!?!

Back Home

Its been an eventful week, the holiday was excellent I enjoyed Budapest drinking good beer eating great food it was lovely. Since getting back I have felt really good if a little tired yesterday I basically sat in my room read all my email, snail mail and caught up with a few things. Then watched lost with Bruce and Phil, who bought me a copy of Civilisation IV. I used to be so adicted to the predisessor Alpha Centuri, already I must have spent 12 hours playing hopfully I wont waste my entire week playing.
I have now just about caught up with the blog and put a load of photos online. I am hoping the week to tranfer a lot of the content from webalbum to coppermine as I think its a lot better.
Spoke to Vicky online earlier and she dropped a bit of a bombshell shes pregnant! I know what you thinking and no its nothing to do with me, I wish her well with everything its going to be hard bringing up a kid on her own but I think she will make a good mum.
Paul phoned me up he seemed in a good mood hopefully might go and visit him this week, still not entirly sure whats going on between himself and Lisa though to be honest I dont think he knows himself. He put me onto Regina Spektor an artist he found on myspace, SHe seems pretty good. I am quiet stressed about his website I did spend time looking at it but well I am no graphic deisgner and he has already lined someone else up to take over but still wants changes. I guess I am finding it hard to get the enthusiasm to work on any of the websites or indeed anything. I think I need to choose a project and work on it try and hone my skills I am worried that perhaps I spread myself too thin and achieve little if I just concentrated on less perhaps I could do more.
Manged to spend some time on rightmove checking whats out there currently it looks like I could either go for a house somewhere like adswood or a flat in Handforth. Neither is very appealing so I guess I will stay with my parents and try and get my deposit to grow futher.

happy birthday~~~

morning my dear Cookie,

its 8:40 am Nov.25th by my time, i'm sure that lulu will be the first one to wish you a happy birthday n__n

how was Hungary? should be enjoying some beers or having fun at the fantastic city :-)

lulu'll be on my trip very soon, 6 days starting from this Sunday, haha, we might have a pic fighting after me back, exchanging as many as wonderful memories...

seeya friend,

lulu

Statue Park

Another cold day here in Budapest, we awoke to a new snowfall outside. I still saw someone swimming in the pool outside though, I thought about giving it a go then decided against (its a long walk from the pool back to the room and I didn't have a robe.Today we visited statue park. After the fall of communism in Hungary all of the the Marxist statues were removed and taken away to a park in the middle of nowhere. It was quiet impressive walking round the imposing snow covered images of Lenin, Stalin and other communist “workers paradise images”. I guess its an ultimate irony that fat capitalists like myself now pay to visit the imagery of communism, Karl Marx would be turning in his grave.

I tried to give Philip and Bruce a grounding in the history of communism but I don't think they found it very interesting or particularly understood the reasons. They were impressed by the statues though.

The other side of the river

After exploring Budas old town today we planned to check out Pest, so we caught the 21 then grabbed the Metro across the Danube.
Originally we planned to go on a coach tour of the city but once there we decided to take a walking tour insted so we walked from Ference Ter to Heros Square.
Stopping at a few of the nice stores on the way (Bruce just had to check out the Apple retailer). We then walked round the park behind heros square then down to the Danube and along the bank of the river watching the night decend. After a quick stop in a bar to warm up with some tasty local beers we walked past the Parliment building and across the chain bridge.
On the way back to the hotel we decieded to ride the Cog train up the hill, it was a strange experience lumbering up the hill I cant believe how good the public transport is I dont think I would ever drive if woodford was as well served as Normafda. The only unfortunate thing was as we were getting off the doors closed leaving me trapped I had to ride the train up the hill several miles to the next stop then wait for the next one down.

Arrival in Budapest

After an early morning start in Zurich we finally managed to get to Budapest, unfortunatly even though the flight was on time we were left standing around for an hour watchin the baggage carolsel the screens said only to find that the baggage thowers had put our luggage on the wrong one.
It took 40 minutes in a taxi to get to the hotel, but it gave us a first glimpse of some of the sights of Budapest. After checking in and getting changed we took the bus into Buda arriving at Moscow Square was a little disorentating, but we were soon walking towards the old town and looking at the castle (though we did make a quick stop so I could buy a skarf to keep out the bitter cold). 
 
The old town was beautiful to walk around the building and statues were very picturesque though a lot of the meseums were closed because we were out of season.

Fog :-(

I am writing this post return of the end of my holiday but I am going to try and write from th point of view of the day itself for each of the holiday posts.
Finally the first day of my holiday, I have been listerally craving this for a month now biding my time for a break from work.
On the way to Manchester Airport it was pretty foggy, I wasnt too worried at the point oh but I should have been!
Our departure time came and went hours sped by, I spoke to the desk and was told to wait around another flight would go out and because our flights were not direct and our connection was missed we would be put on a different connection or put us up in a hotel room for the night and get a connection the next day.

After waiting for hours and hours in Manchester we finally got underway totally late for the connection unfortunatly when we spoke to the Swiss Air staff at the check in desk they were unable to get us on a flight that day and told us WE would have to pay for a hotel. Needless to say I was more than a little vexed about this and will be writing some letters of complaint once I get back home. So Swiss air set us up a discounted room in the Renaissance Marriot Hotel Zurich. Its a 5* hotel and well it was really nice, we had dinner in the Asian resutrant and it was supurb, the Sushi was about the best ive ever had so I was starting to feel better, after a drink in the bar it was time for bed in order to make the airport bus at 6.10am.

Ong Bak attack

After another day at work and another tiring gym session I decided a night I might be night so spent this evening watching some movies.

Ring 2,  oh dear oh dear Hollywoods obsession with Japanese horror has really gone wrong now, whilst I preferred the original Ring to the remake I thought the remake was passible his however was utter tripe I didn't care about the characters one bit yuk.

Next movie I was joined by Bruce though he spent most of his time searching for content on google video, mostly of potato guns and a where to buy ex soviet tanks why you ask perhaps one of his colleagues wiping out todays work finally tipped I'm over the edge?

Ong Bak is a Thai martial arts film it was quiet enjoyable with its forgettable plot terrible dialogue but excellent special effects, given it was done without wirework or cgi it was very impressive.

Comedy Night

Another Comedy night at the Woodford, British Legion tis time the comedians were pretty good especially the Kiwi he reminded me and Phil of Phils NewZealand housemate Sam.
IT was a trange compedy night, Phil and I were sat with Eric, Phils neighbour. Eric proved to be quiet an interesting guy I basically never knew either of my grandads my mum dad was alive but pretty out of it during my lifetime, so it was quiet interesting to talk to someone alive form the same generation. We were also sat with the young people from last comedy night they didnt make quiet so many heckles this time. Talking of heckles Martin could come as he spent the weeked in Birminham working on a job.
I got pretty drunk its taken me a while to sober up enough to write this blog, Jono was up on the walk home so popped in for a cup of tea.
So drunk in fact I thin I might have sent some rather inappropriate tet to girls in my phonebook oops well so far no responses ill just ignore that and move on.

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day

Ah another evening another hour spent at the pub, after yet another day spent at work is this my life is this it? Has a life that once promised so much evapourated into work/gym/pub/oblivion?
In 15 days I will be 26 years old another year of being alone living with my parents achieveing little, or have I achieved more last ear that any time before? I managed to get a pay rise, paid off thousands of pounds of debt, consolidate my savings and get fitter and lighter than I have been in years. So what metric should I measure myself by, one where I am doing well compared to most or one where I am not doing enough as I want?
Tonight at the pub nick was talking about his achievements his houses his relaionship with Becky and compared to that I feel a complete failure or is he an excptional success? He posed the age old question do people make there own luck or are we all victims of circumstance, personall I believe some people are better at handling change and that maes them lucky but as compared with chance or statistics one person has no better or worse luck a 1/1000 chance is a once in a lifetime occurance but given the millions, billions of people 1/1,000,000 chances happen to someone all the time.
I guess the real question is can I John Cooke pruce anything truly exceptional, can I ever achieve the life I want or a
am I forever doomed to believe there is something more something worthwhile lurkng just around the corner.
Is this all bullshit has my upcoming birthday coupled with constant crap at work made me insightful or am I typing drunken gibberish Ill let the reader decide.
Well I should go to bed sleep off the beer rest my legs from the run I had earlier, tomorrow I can try and answer the questions and put them to one side and get on with the day to day grind, night all.
Oh weird just as I type this I recieve a text message telling me I look good but I am a little shit the number is unknown was this a mistake or is someone trying to make me feel worse? Strange how the brain tried to make patterns in the chaos.

Today Was a good day

I guess so far a lot of my blogs have been about the negative sides of my life, some readers might think I am a terminally depressed person, when infact really I am quiet positive about life in many ways so as today I had a really good day I thought I would post a happy positive message.
Work went well for a change I managed to single handedly solve serval sdrs which thought they were small made made feel good that I was able to beat them without begging for help or looking like I am incapable. Even JB seemed happy, at least for a few minutes. I even managed to solve two bugs within an hour one for GS and another for Natasha.
I also got an email from the big boss, he was acutally passing on company information to me like I am a part of the team was very pleasing. Suddenly after a small email I was again part of the team someone important again, whether in the long term it is meaningful is unemporant for the moment I feel valued hurrah.
To celebrate I went to the gym an di a full cardio and weights routine I felt like a conquering hero, RT caught up with me and I showe him my routine, I think he was impressed with me I know its petty but It really made me feel like I am starting to get somewhere.
After the gym got a call from NB he wanted me to list some things on ebay but also invited me over for a few drinks, well sounded like a plan after ebaying I went straight round saw Nick Bec' and the other Paul, then Ian and Faye turned up spent the evening drinking chatting and relaxing the perfect end to an excellent day.
Doh, Ive just had to explain this entire post to lulu I think perhaps I am too drunk at the time to write coherently, cathc you ll soon
Cookie ;-)

Fitness and Websites

Well its been about three months since I started the mens health trainer, and I think I am finally starting to see results. The weights have started to creep up but I am able to handel it. Although I still need to buy some new trainers on the cardio machines I seem t be able to handle 30-45 minute sessions better than ever. Im probably fitter now than I have been since I was at school playing two games of rugby a week (no really I was actually quiet good before I tarted drinking and smoking use to do two training sessions as well!).
Regaless I am fitter leaner and more healhy and yet somehow this has not lead my life in the way I would have expected. I hoped that looking better would make it easier to meet women, and well I guess it hs just so far I havent met any that I like who liked me. Along the same line I earn more than I have ever done and yet I never seem to have an spare cash to enoyu myself. Though a lot of that relates to reckless spending in the past.
I suppose I find it hard to be happy, I can't eaisly settle for things, I lose some weight or pay off a debt and rather than celebrate the fact I look towards the next challenge. know I will never be perfect but should I stop striving for perfection? I think a lot of people just find something like martial arts religion or business and the themselves wholeheartedly into that, using that one hing as a yadstick for their lives. I fear any path that leads to addiction given I have such an addcative personality. I feel ore for the victorin sense of learning bits about everythingsunderstanding the world not justone piece of the puzzel. Latey though even in that I a proved ignorant the day to day grind taking away my ability to learn.
One success yesterday evening I found out about the iframe tage and how it can be used to lunch a file and play it inde the current web page. I shall be putting this trick to use in Pauls website soon.

Too Much Work Too Little Time

After work and the gym the next biggest drain on my time is building pcs and websites. INitailly the idea as that this extra work woul cover the cost of running my webserver (from which this sie and others are running). Somehow through my inability to oranise properly I never seem to have managed to gather in the money. Last night it was Ian turn to badger meinto working on his website. I have added a lot more text and changed the colour scheme sightly. Unfortunatly doing it reminded me of my main faiing when it comes to web design, in that I am just artistic enough I find it hard to decern how to make things look good those little exra touches people use to improve the layout and style just seem beyond me.
Tongith I will revisit Pauls website I plan to add in his mp3s and lyrics and hopefully find a way to use the colour scheme he wants.
Last night I went to the pub with Phil and Bruce we are hopefully going to book our trip soon, current possibilites are either Prague again which I would like but prefer to go somewhere new, Budapest Warsaw or Bratislava.

My name is John and Im a computer repairman

Once upon a time it was seriously uncool to know abount computers, I remember being at primary and high school, people though computers were these crazy weird things only true nerds with beards used.
Somewhere about 2002 the internet suddenly changed all of that computers were a big thing, now even my anti the biggest luddite I know uses a computer. Unfortunatly due to viruses and the complexity of the damn things all of a sudden instead of hiding computer literacy for fear of being called a geek now I hide my knowledge for fear of being asked to look at someones pc....
On which note some people I know needed there computers fixing this was the hax0red laptop and the dell comp I upgraded the memory in. Tonight I got reminded why its a bad idea fixing things for people I gave back the dell working to the best of my knowledge two days later its back here apparently it crashes all the time now :-S Im pretty sure it was fine all I did was remove some programs defrag and update windows, av install anti spyware, oh and upgrade the memory it should be fine ho well I investigate tomorrow. ThoughI have a million and one things to do like Ian and Pauls websites oh well the money for these pcs at least paid for my graphics card upgrade.
Tonight I watched Kung Fu Hustle which was a great fun full of chease and some grat kung fu and Batman Begins which I expected to hate and actually really enjoyed.

Terminal Tournaments V

Ah the sound of fans wirring, glow of leds and smell of pizza it must be a lan party!
This is the fifth lan we have run under the terminal tournaments banner, and the first one to feature a competition with prizes. The competition worked well even though I got knocked out in the second round by eventual winner Leon. I was upset that we didnt get any new people but 13 is a good turnout by any standards. I think perhaps we were not as organised as we could have been, I hope next time we can sort out a more professional gaming session.
Disorganisation aside it was a good lan with plenty of fragging especially by David B and Leon aka Bezza.
My new graphics card proved to be nice and slick for playing quake four and counter strike source, though Bruces 24 inch lcd monitor proved to be the biggest crowd pleaser.
Martin O seemed to be down I think he is having girlfriend troubles poor him, whilst Martin G was in a fine mood recieving many text from this new girl Charlotte. Whilst I am really pleased for him I do feel down that increasingly I am the only single person of my friends. I might join yahoo personals see if I can meet anyone new hopefully it will be better than the disaster that was loopylove.

Replay / Endo

Just got back from a night out in Manchester Martin, myself Phil and Martins friend Endo went to watch Sandbox the Academy Four. It in the club underneath the Manchester University Student Union. It wasnt a very good gig for sandbox although the club is all nice and new with a nice PA the levels were wrong there was feedback and it was too loud, upsetting really considering seeing Sandbox at Academy three was excellent. Oh well, after the gig we neededd to give our ears a est so went for a curry in Rusholme. Endo is a fun guy even more laddish than Martin bit much at times but seems a nice guy, he has just finished a year travelling round the world. Phil was convinced he bought our Oz van though I think the chance is fairly remote is would be a amusing.

Recently I have been thinking a lot about going travelling, but I cant decide whether I want to run away from my problems or that I am too afraid to get out on my own. I showed Liz's final email to Lulu she thinks I should act more confident and stop being so negative about myself, I am trying its just I always seem to fall short perhaps I just dont understand how to be happy?

Bought a new graphics card today a nice new geforce 6800xt. After seeing how well Bergers worked I felt it would breath some life into my aging PC. When I saw it was on today only at scan for 96 pounds I decided I ahd to have one. Just in time for the lan too :-D I gave the old one to my dad I think he was happy its (radeon 9600) got a nicer refresh rate than than his old radeon 7000. Scan computers is next to Bolton arena and that reminded me of the Coldplay concern and Ironically Bruce sent me some phots from his phone taken at the concert




As a side note I went through Pauls Blogs and removed the mass of comment spam he had accumulated and turned on the picture verification so hopefully it will put a stop to it.

p0wned

Another fun day full of computer related crap. After not being able to sleep last night I felt like exhausted. I had to get up an hour early to as I wanted to do a couple of things before the masses arrived. I made it in early enough to take a copy of the live system onto training. It seemed to go smoothly, I even managed to find the bug which had been causing the PSD to fail in transformation.

Only problem is as I feared the data has not been completed by the advisor's correctly so now Julie and I will have to go through about 40 cases and correct the details :-S

Sometimes people really annoy me, they ask for advisor when things go wrong but never listen to it. Dispite my best efforts they install crap software don't update and get their PC's into a real mess. The Doyle's PC's both have virus on them the laptop was by far the worst, an un-patched XP system with no anti virus it was heavily compromised having all sorts of weird networking services IRC bots and backdoors on-board. Netstat showed huge numbers of connections going out mostly to other (probably infected computers). Oh dear :-(
The other machine was only slightly compromised as a much more secure XP SP2 computer with anti virus the only problem I could find was a rouge active x control. I hope they arn't too upset when I tell them, though I wish they had bought an Apple Mac like I suggested!

Insomnia

Arghhhhh I am going crazy I cant sleep, my mind is totally awake. Stupid rain its hammering on my roof my room is humid, I am too hot then too cold what's wrong with me? I have been working on Paul's website its not very good, yet, I find sometimes it takes so long to do what should be a simple task just because I am out of the habit of web design, not that I was ever really that great. I suddenly have load of work on Ian's additions craddy site and now two more PC's to fix for the Doyles. The reminds me I must contact Steve Wilson and pick up my cable in time for the lan.
Liz was playing on my mind she sent me an email quiet a damning one, and she was right in a way but it dosn't really change the fact I need to sort things out on my own and I cant do it with someone so possessive. I am not sure if I should reply to her.