Never rains but it pours

Having had my very first call out on Friday, the second was a lot sooner, as in last night. This one wasn't a straight forward and involved 5 hours on a conference call with the states, and an extra half hour getting up to speed and sorting stuff out for the "morning". I finally got to bed about 4am.

Let me tell you, going to work on 4.5 hours sleep is no fun what so ever but I managed to get through the day and tonights band rehearsal on a heady mixture of Pro Plus, coffee and Red Bull.

All that's left to do now is wait out the next hour or so to ensure that there's no follow ups or new emergencies and then try and get a good 8 hours. Ah sleep, how nice that will be. zzzZZZzzz

How musical are you?

Loads of people it seems will claim that they are tone deaf mainly because they aren't able to sing in tune with other people. But apparently there is a big difference between not being able to sing and not being able to tell the difference between notes (which is what true tone-deafness is apparently).

While browsing the BBC News website (during my lunch break) I ran across this article which explained the difference and how scientists are getting interested in what appears to be a genetic trait.

This also links to an online test to see how good you are at hearing the differences two samples of music (if they exist). I took it and got 28 out of 30, which I didn't think was too bad, especially as I claim to be a bit of a musician ;)

Have a go and see how well you do...

Playing silly beggars

Ok, so Liz has got this New Years resolution to do something new every week for the year and this weeks was an experiment that she'd heard on Radio 1 that involved a smarties tube, a tube of mentos and a two litre bottle of coke.

Finding the mentos was possibly the trickest bit having checked all the supermarkets in Totton I finally found the damn things in the local co-op in a last ditch attempt. After an abortive first try Thursday morning, Friday mornings retry yielded the desired results.

It's not easy to fully describe the results, so watch the video linked here from Liz's Blog.

Breaking a duck

Well I've just gone on call for the first time this year and already had my very first (genuine) call out. Hadn't fully left work, just about to drive home when the phone went off, so after a quick discussion with the guy out in the states, I agreed to take a look once I got home.

So that's what I've just done, so there's always that dangerous possibility that it's gonna come back and require more working at home but then I do get paid for it, and given that this is the first (and only time) it's happened in a year of being on the on call rota it's not too bad.

Putting the fun back into driving?

My car has just been through it's annual service which meant I had the opportunity to drive one of the courtesy cars around for the day. These are fairly new Corsas and I have to admit that this years was better than last years in which I felt very oversized and cramped (6ft 2in is far too big for a little car).

So the drive into work from the garage was fairly easy and doable, however on the way back I thought I'd try out the "fun" road between Hursley and Chandlers Ford. Driving as I knew I could in my own car was interesting to say the least, cornering was definitely an experience, more so than you normally get in a Vauxhall.

So in my humble opinion, putting the fun back into driving? for nipping around in the town/city the corsa is perfectly comfortable and can hold it's own. For doing fun things like 60 down a twisty country road, not so good.

Friends and Family

After several weekend meetings it was nice not to have to travel anywhere and spend some time at home. Large amounts of tidying went on Saturday before the band guys came round for snacks, pizza and DVD. The evening was a lot of fun, including a closely contested game of Pictionary. How I got the last clue is not something I really want to dealve into at this point but it was a great shout for the win.

Sunday it was back to the parents for dinner, don't remember the afternoon much due to some good napping, which was understandable due to the late night before. But it was good to catch up, and a roast dinner is always welcome.

Anyone fancy a curry?

What is it about that particular phrase that suddenly makes you hungry regardless of everything else you've eaten that day. Yesterday was one of those days, went out for a drink with some mates (or at least that was the plan) until we got to the first pub and the shout goes up, "we're going to Koh-i-noor" (our local curry house).

Well that was it, everyone wanted a curry at that point, and even though we had to wait a bit longer than expected for the table, it was a great meal and everyone had a great time, with some good banter going on.

Here's to the next time then, and the calling of that magic phrase...

TV Listings

If you've looked at the links down the right hand side you might have noticed that a couple of them mention TV listings. This isn't only because I'm a bit of a telly addict but have a vested interest in those particular sites.

bleb.org is run by Andrew Flegg and provides listings for all UK terrestrial and freeview channels. About a year ago I wrote a small script which generates RSS feeds which various people have used about the place. Andy Clayton has taken this a bit further and produced a widget for OSX which shows what's on now and next.

Take a look and see if they're of any use to you, hopefully they are.

First Post!! (again)

Ok, so it would appear to be a new year and a new blog, but after some severe computer issues my old website is offline for the forseeable future so lets start anew here.

Just got back from Ultimate practice with only a slight muscle cramp so that's certainly better than the other week which had me walking funny for the rest of the week.

Apart from that I *really* need to get the house tidied before the band guys come round at the weekend, plus there's the ongoing O&S work which I'm sure will start to get mentioned more and more in future blog posts (which there *will* be ;) )