I’ve been on Nightshifts again, in case you’re wondering why I’ve not been saying anything on here, or been online much.

But, tonight at work was fun. We witnessed the birth of a new ordering system, hand delivered from the fiery bowels of deepest, darkest Hell. Or it may have been one of our clients. I can’t remember. And we, nightshift crew were the first to have a go of it. Oh, goody.

Well, I say “Oh, goody.”, I really mean “WHY US? WHY INFLICT THIS PAIN UNTO OUR SOULS?”. As you can guess, there had been lots of horror stories and rumours about it.

I signed into it the first time on the stroke of midnight, as nervous as a long-tailed dog in a room full of rocking chairs. I expected the walls to come crashing down, the car park to flood, and a plague of locusts to pick up the water cooler and fly off. Surprisingly, none of this happened. For a building constructed in the mid-80’s, the walls stayed surprisingly upright, the carpark had one little puddle in it, and the only insects were the flies hanging around the putrid coffee cups left in Outbound. So, hurrah then!

It wasn’t without its teething problems, but there were much less teeth grinding and hair pulling than I had originally anticipated.

So, other than work, I’ve not done much. I’ve been pigging about with the site a bit though.

Just for funsies, I thought I’d have a look at my web access stats for the year. My access logs get mailed to me on a weekly basis… or rather, the ones from 10 weeks ago do… it’s hard to explain. so I simply won’t bother!

You can browse them here… http://www.mercuryvapour.co.uk/mvstats/ (For the referral spammers out there, they’re delayed by 10 weeks, and I’ve taken off the referrers. So… nyeh).

The “2005″ section is the most interesting, as I’ve listed my top 100 keywords from google.com (i.e., what people have searched for on the intarweb to find my site). It’s interesting reading to say the least. And what scares me more than anything are the amount of sick pervs who have searched for a certain athlete urinating in the street during the London Marathon.

Ahem. Moving on swiftly. I’ve been ebaying again. Buying this time, though. Yesterday I received the famous Snooker theme. You know, the grungey 80’s guitar one, namely “Drag Racer” by The Doug Wood Band (or the Douglas Wood Group as the record states). It’s great. That’s what a PROPER theme tune sounds like. Surprisingly, it’s copyrighted 1982. I thought it was much older than that.

And on the subject of eBay, YES! I finally have it! A 3″ copy of “Downtown”, by One 2 Many (Who else?). And NO! It DOESN’T fucking work.

Looking at the CD itself, it seems that the cause of the fault is actually the ink the disk label is printed with - it looks like it’s reacted with the disc. The disc is pretty opaque, not like the cheapy CD’s you get these days, and it’s hard to see through it if you hold the disk against the light. However, the label has a pinkish-brown tint to it, and you can actually see the label text in reverse, on the playing surface of the disk.

So, it’s a sad day, but it’s looking like another copy of Downtown has expired from this earth.

Actually. I’ve just done a google, and I was RIGHT!!!! Take a look at this…

One early problem occurred in the mid-to-late 1980s when a number ofCDs were labeled with an ink that eventually igrated through the lacquer on the label side and caused the aluminum surface to lose its reflectivity. The damage is mmediately visible by looking at the data side of the discs in question. These discs self-destructed very quickly and were pressed in relatively small numbers, so you are unlikely to run across any today.

The best-known problem is with a larger number of discs pressed between 1989 and 1991 by Philips Data Optical (PDO) in the UK. Due to errors in manufacturing, these discs are slowly turning a dark orange or bronze color, primarily on the label side. This discoloration gradually propagates from the outer edge of the CD towards the center, and can eventually make such discs unplayable.

Bugger, eh? Such a great song, rotting its way into CD heaven. I could cry. But I won’t because I still have my 5″ copy, which still works perfectly. Hurrah!

Anyway, I’m off to bed. I’m not exactly tired yet, but the quicker this last nightshift comes and goes, the quicker I can start MY HOLIDAYS! Yay!

And one last thing, just a quick “Byeee” to Dave from work, an avid reader of this site, who has moved onto pastures new, or at least will do in the next week or so. Lucky him!

Technorati Tags: broken, CD, compact disk, faulty, nightshift, one 2 many, pdo, statistics, work

The fans keep going. Zippy isn’t my machine, so I’m not entirely bothered. but it’s a proven fact that air circulation prevents stuff like this happening. Except Zippy doesn’t *have* air circulation. I’m amazed it’s survived as long as it has to be honest.

Technorati Tags: computer, faulty, power supply, psu

I’d like to start this blog in a polite manner, but it’s just not possible. So here we go….

“I have the shits”.

I won’t graphically describe it, because I think that says it all.

Technorati Tags: ill, shits, unwell

Firstly, I must apologise to the people in real life who have not heard from me for such a long time. Unfortunately, work is taking over my entire life at the minute. I would love to have some free time, but no, that doesn’t seem to want to happen. I’m not dead, just working dodgy shifts.

Anyway, onto news of the fun kind. I’d love to chat about work all night. Well, when I say love, I mean, I’d rather stick hot needles through my retinae while reading poetry composed by Jimmy Somerville, using vowels only.

So, onto the “fun” stuff. Flashback to Saturday. A hastily arranged night out found me in Peterlee by 6PM. Andy M’s local had a karaoke night, so I was invited up there for the night. Great stuff! I arrived at the house, and was greeted by Hornsby (no… not Bruce), someone who I’ve met quite a few times over the past couple of years, and have always got on well with. I arrived, and wished him Happy New Year. It really had been that long since I’d been up there.

Anyway, the mood was set for the night with a can of lager, and Andrew WK blasting from the Hi-fi. Fantastic! Unfortunately, Andy M had to put up with work until 9PM, and so while I was knocking back cold, frosty, laaarvely pints of Heineken Export, he had to put up with stupid, stupid people, whinging about nothing we can help with.

It was the first time ever I’d been out for a night out in Peterlee, and although it was just around the corner from where he lived, and only 10 or so miles from where I live, it felt so different. The choice of music was really quite strange. They were songs I liked, and I can say some of them were completely murdered. I was amazed, when one of the last songs they played (or rather, had someone sing along to), was “Through The Barricades” by Spandau Ballet. A song I absolutely fucking adore. Unfortunately, after aniseed Aftershocks, I can’t remember exactly what happened after that.

Well, OK, I can. We ordered an indian from the place which was literally pissing difference from the pub. Now, the very first time I went to Andy M’s, we ordered an indian, and I always remember it as being one of the nicest ones ever, ever, ever.

So, I ordered a chicken madras, and once again, wasn’t disappointed. Goooorgeous! Mind you, when have you ever heard me complain about a curry?

The rest of the night involved watching Alan Partridge, Family Guy, and “Napoleon Dynamite”. All classics. Back o’ the net!

I seem to remember some part of the conversation (and that’s probably the only part of the conversation I remember) after the film was my ownage of “Forever Young” by Alphaville. Just to prove that my “official” record collection includes said title, here it is.

So, after that Andy M fell asleep on the floor, Hornsby fell asleep on the sofa, which left me and Dawn wide awake. Dawn guided Andy to bed, Hornsby was quite content with sleeping on the sofa, which meant I’d got the spare bed! yay!

I awoke the next morning, with no backache, and unlike Hornsby, I don’t have contact lenses to fall asleep in, so I still had a perfectly clear view of the morning.

The day was Sunday. Could it get any more interesting?

Andy had to go to work at 11:30, so he offered to drop me off on his way to work.

By the time I got there, Daddykins had already left for his lodge, so I had the house to myself. And, what better way to spend the afternoon than…. watching the Great North Run. I love it. Every hear they use Mark Knopfler’s “Going Home” as the signature tune… more on that in a second.

Because, just as most people were finishing, I happened to hear a “WhoooooOOOOOOOOOOSHHHHhhhhhhhhhh”…. I looked out of the window, and the Red Arrows were flying directly over our house. Unbelievable! OK, so there were only 4 of them, but I’d never seen them before. I was well happy.

But was it the Red Arrows? Undoubtedly. Because approximately 15 mins after flying over our house, the exact same “WhoooooOOOOOOOOOOSHHHHhhhhhhhhhh”, came through the telly speakers, as the Red Arrows did a fly-past of the GNR crowd.

That was pretty much the end of the GNR by that point, the telly coverage was finishing. I’d have hoped they’d play the theme all the way through.

No suck luck. Some fucker forgot to “up the fader”, so for the first minute or so, all you got was credits, the only background noise appeared to me a microphone, outside, somewhere. With only a few seconds to go, someone cranked up the music. Sigh. Never mind.

Sunday seemed to disappear into obscurity for the afternoon part of it. Nothing particularly exciting happened.

Onto Monday. Once again, a day hidden in obscurity, except for the 98 calls I took, and also for the CD’s I sent from ebay sales. A dire day overall.

Tuesday only sparked up with an hour or so to go. After switching off for 9 hours, I finished work at 11. On the way home, my mobile rang. Up flashed “Dad”. And the conversation went like this..

Me: “Whaaaaaa?”
Dad: “When you come in, come out in the back [garden] and don’t let the dogs out”
M: “Um. OK. What for?”
D: “You’ll see…..”
M: “Why? what’s up?”
D: “Nothing…. yet”
M: “Wha? What’s happened?”
D: “You’ll see when you get here…”
M: “Oh… er, ok, bye.”

After picking my jaw up off the floor, I began to wonder what had happened. The conversation was, ahem… a little sketchy, and knowing that my dad would only phone me if something is wrong, I began to wonder what the hell was going on.

I arrived at home, expecting to find the house demolished, or a dead body in the back garden. Thankfully, it was neither of those things. The object he wanted to show me was very much alive, and stupidly prickly. Yes, I’m talking about…. a hedgehog! Awww.

Hartlepool’s the type of town that doesn’t exactly flourish when it comes to wildlife, so the sight of anything wild could make front page headlines in the Hartlepool Mail. And honestly, I’m not joking there. Only a few weeks ago, there was a front page headline of somebody who may have witnessed a shark swimming off the coast.

Despite the fact that the Mail would be less than impressed by the sighting of a hedgehog, it’s a less common sight thatn say, a mouse. I had to flush a dead mouse down the drain the other week after it had fallen into the drain and drowned. Poor bugger. Its eyes had turned white and everything.

Back to the hedgehog, I did indeed run upstairs to grab the camera. Sadly, I’m several feet bigger than he/she is, so, the best picture taken happened to be one from far away. It’s still not the greatest picture in the world, having had to be tarted up, but you can see it, at least. The rest of them just looked like an overfed bog brush in the dark.

OK, I know it’s been asked many times before, but exactly how do hedgehogs mate? I’m not googling it, before anyone asks….

Technorati Tags: alphaville, andy m, awwww, bbc, curry, cute, great north run, hedgehog, madras, mistake, night out, peterlee, red arrows, work

Woo! Norton Ghost has arrived, to a flurry of excitement. Or rather to a flurry of “What the hell have I paid £5 shipping for? A crushed box, wrapped up in paper?”

Either way, it plopped flatly onto my doormat this morning, I rushed to install it and… WHY OH WHY DOES IT NOT WORK?

Well, I say it doesn’t work. It’s backed up Beastbits’ C drive to another hard drive, but that really is all it’s done. I bought it so it can back up to DVD, but no luck yet….

I’ll let you know how I get on. Bet you can’t wait.

Technorati Tags: backup, norton ghost