You know, it’s just been a crap few days, and October’s always a shit month, so I’ll probably not be blogging much in the near future. Yes, even less than usual!

The past few months at work have been OK, but it’s now the silly period, and it’s even sillier than usual. I could go into details, but as the Facebook Grass (the “person” who grasses up lowly employees to the higher management should they even breathe a word of truth about our place of employment) is doing his/her thing again, I’ll just say one thing. “LOL”.

Mind you, I don’t think many people at work actually read this site any more, so I could sit here and blurt the whole thing out. It’s pure pantomime stuff, it really is.

Tonight, however, I’m going to hopefully forget about the whole fucking place, and let my hair down, for I shall be attening The Studio tonight, to watch a few local bands play, including Accidents By Design and the almighty Infernus. Should be a good night.

Back to the subject of blogging, I have completed blogging about that stupid sodding hard drive. It works, that’s the end of it. Therefore, the other morning, after another shocking 12-hour shift, I came home and decided to write a blog about music. I’d been listening to one of my favourite tracks, and decided I’d write an indepth blog about what I liked about it. Only thing was, I’d written an identical blog 18 months ago, and didn’t realise until I’d just about finished it.

ironically, that previous post also gives details about hard drive upgrade problems I’d been having around that time.

Anyway, because I’m not going to waste an hour’s worth of typing, here’s the post in its entirety..

I’ve had a shit day at work today, so you’ll have to forgive me for having one of my “ooooh, a song I like, and how I came about it” blogs.

It turned out that for the purpose of using it as a TV theme, it was sped up by approximately 10%. I think I prefer the original, slower version.

I’ve just noticed that this post contains more swearies than any I’ve written for a long time. Ah well, never mind, eh?

EDIT: Ooooh, I do like these edits. Missed out a quote mark which meant that the first section of text was missing. Quickly fixed, so sorry if the post didn;t make much sense originally.

I really dislike them.

For the past two nights, there has been one of these little shits in the office. I happened to be the first one to spot it the other night, as it happened to land on my “umbilical cord” (the wire from my headset leading to my phone). I froze, slowly backing up, unplugging my headset, and then legging it. As I reversed it headed towards me. I think everyone thought I was mad.

It turned out that 4 of the 5 people who were in the office with me also severely disliked the little stripy buggers. The only person to not admit to disliking them was Dick Brown, webmaster of short-lived shitfest

I have the sad duty of announcing the death of a good friend and work colleague. Stu, one of the security guards who look after where I work, sadly died of a heart attack yesterday.

I feel that I can’t say much more than that. I am truly, truly devastated. He really was one of the best blokes you were ever likely to meet. I have known him pretty much from when I started at my job 8 years ago.

We would often spend time joking with each other about which one finished our shifts first. I would often say, as I was leaving the building, someting along the lines of “Well, there’s 8 cold ones in the fridge for when I get in”, normally resulting in a glare, and a “Yeah, go on, fuck off!”, which was even more prominent if he just happened to be starting his night shift as I was leaving. One of the best examples of this was when he was on Messenger, at work. He was sat in his little security office, and I took a photo over the line of cold cans I was about to drink. Honestly, you’ve never heard swearing like it. It was hilarious. He always remembered that night, and would often remind me of it, usually adding the word “twat” to the end of it.

I recall the time I received a call on my mobile from him. I can’t remember the exact details of what it was he asked me, in fact, I didn’t even know it was him, as he called from a different number. When he realised I was out, enjoying several and/or many pints, alongside a game of snooker, my phone turned blue.

He will always hold the record for the “most calls taken by a security guard”, following the release of a particularly bugged piece of software. I think it was something like 400.

He was a stickler to the golden rule… if you order a takeaway to be delivered to work, you always ask the security guard if he wants anything. Otherwise, your food may be subject to a 20-minute “cooling off” period in his office. Many a new worker fell foul to that rule, only to be presented with luke-warm, stodgy chips! If you asked him if he wanted anything, your food would be hand-delivered to your desk, no questions asked, and no matter what type of “eating at your desk” ban may have been in place at the time. To put it simply, if you respect him, he respects you, and that goes for everything.

My memories of Stu are long and rambling. He was a great guy, a true asset to the company, and someone who will be sorely missed by all who knew him. I’ll miss you mate.

Oddly, it seems that a few people who know me have once again initiated an interest on online chess site “Red Hot Pawn”.

It is a site that has, for me, remained unvisited since about 2006. I think I mentioned it a lot in here, even going so far as to having a little link to my profile.

Richard “Don’t Go there” Rice started a game off with me, seemingly out of the blue, shortly followed by Dan. This also allowed me to find an old game I’d started with JT, and had totally forgotten about. This particular game started in 2006, and I’d hazard a guess to say that at three years old, it’s one of the longest chess games to actually take place on that site.

I can’t find any way of ordering the current games by start date or ID number, so I can’t say whether it is or not.

I also challenged Coatesy to a game (he’s winning 3-0 in the series), but all of his details including date of birth and blood group have probably changed since I last spoke to him…

Why trumpet? Why not?

So, as mentioned yesterday, it is almost time for the 2009 Hartlepool CockDockfest. I have just finished yet another nightshift, so before I toddle off to the land of Nod, I might as well give you a rundown on what I’ve been doing over the last 20 minutes or so.

Well, firstly I left work, and returned home in a taxi accompanied by Dick Brown (who never updates his website even though he claims it’s the best thing ever). He was to be dropped off at his end of town, and I was to be dropped off outside the large, wrought iron gates protecting Mercuryvapour Towers from rogues, vagabonds, and those annoying little shits that slap those plastic “collection bags” through your ‘letterbocks’

Anyway, as we were coasting along quietly, Bruce Hornsby’s “The Way It is” came on the radio. With a quality piece of comedy timing, we both looked at each other, and said the word “Tupac”. It’s a long running joke between the night shift, that every song in the world ever was composed and recorded by Tupac at some point. You really had to be there, I suppose.

After DB got dropped off, we headed back home, and I witnessed my very first known sighting of a Thorn Gamma 1, right here in sunny old Hartlepool. Whee! Actually, Andrew sent me some pictures of it the other week, but with Beastbits running hotter than two naked nuns having a jelly fight, I’ve not been able to process the images properly.

I return home to find that I have “created life”. You may remember the marigold plant I planted the other week, well, good news, it’s sprouted its first flower!

It’s taken me almost 30 years to achieve something, and unfortunately, the thing that I’ve achieved is simply a front garden that doesn’t suck as much as it once did.

I’m off to bed for a couple of hours. A long day is ahead of me.