Saturday, April 30, 2005

It's a sad fact that the older you get, the less exciting your birthday gets. Back in the days when I was a kid your birthday seemed to last for days and were full of every toy you could ever wish for; enough in fact to keep you quiet until Christmas.

Sadly, now i'm all grown up, birthdays just aren't the same. It would be lovely to be able to recreate the magic of a childhood birthday once you're in your thirties but sadly that just doesn't happen.

I think what brought this home to me was my first act this morning. Was it opening huge presents? No, it was cleaning catsick off of the bedroom carpet. Happy f**kin birthday!

Posted by Antz at 10:34 AM | Permalink | | |

Tuesday, April 26, 2005

For the first month of my new job I'm working from home; something I've never had to do before on a long term basis and so it's an proving to be an odd experience. I have plenty to do, however I've already discovered it's very easy to get distracted. You'd imagine that being isolated from the general hubub of office life would let you concentrate however there are all manmer of things around the house that can distracte you just as easily. After two days I think I've got it sussed; I've asked the cats to lock me in the office and not to let me out until my working day is over.

Posted by Antz at 6:00 PM | Permalink | | |

It's a good job that a man from Sky is coming to deal with our 'Sky verses Tree' issue as the fact that it's rained this morning has stopped the Sky box from getting any picture whatsoever. All I'm faced with now is a blue screen telling me there's no satellite signal. Time to reach for those DVDs I've been putting off watching.

Posted by Antz at 12:38 PM | Permalink | | |

Monday, April 25, 2005

A while back I was going on about how I didn?t know how I ever survived without the ability the pause live TV; well now I wish I could stop live TV from pausing. For the last week our carefully selected TV viewing as been interrupted by random glitches which cause the picture to freeze for a second or two. It started off happening a couple of times an hour and has got gradually worse. Now it?s happening every minute or so.

Now, I?m not Miss Marple, but I?m pretty sure that the reason for our new ?re-mixed? TV is that the leaves on the pear tree in the garden have started to appear after the winter and as a result the Sky dish is having problems picking up the signal through the new greenery.

It does beg the question ?Why did the Sky engineers fit the dish where they did when they knew there was a tree in the way?? My guess is they knew it wasn?t their problem and couldn?t be arsed to run the extra 10 metres of cable they?d have needed to set the disk up well out of the tree?s reach. Sky is sending an engineer on Wednesday to see what they can do to sort out our TV. I wonder whether Sky or the tree will win?

Posted by Antz at 6:32 PM | Permalink | | |

Saturday, April 23, 2005

Sometimes you just can't think of what to say; so why bother.

Posted by Antz at 12:19 PM | Permalink | | |

Friday, April 22, 2005

Why is it that a week off always flies past far faster than a week at work? It's so unfair. It's already Friday and my sneaky week off between jobs is at an end already. I guess it could be argued that I've simply wasted the whole week. Maybe if i'd planned some exciting uses for my time off it would have lasted longer.

Posted by Antz at 11:48 AM | Permalink | | |

Sunday, April 17, 2005

Because of serious problems at work and because of the flat fire David's marathon training during the last few weeks has been erratic to say the least so I think both of us where pretty unsure about how he was going to do in the London Marathon. Over the last couple of weeks he's managed to squeeze in two small runs; which isn't ideal when you have over 26 miles of London hardtop to pound around.

But with the big day upon us there was nothing any of us could do about the lack of training. All David could do was give it his best shot and all I could do was to try and cheer him on from as many roadside vantage points as possible. David, incidentally, did better at his side of the bargain than I did, as it was a lot harder moving around London off the course than on it.

In all our friend Pat and I planned to cheer on David from a total of five vantage points around the route and we hoped to hook-up with friends in a couple of locations as we went round. The marvels of mobile telephony meant David could send regular progress reports by mobile so at pretty much any time we knew where he would be. We started our roadside vigil at Surrey Quay in South London (7 miles), which we got to in plenty of time and were shouting and cheering as David flew past; looking in far better shape after seven miles than we did after two tube trips.

Traveling between our planned vantage points proved to be much harder than we had planned because of the huge number of people attempting to do exactly the same. We missed David at our second base, Rotherhithe, and had absolutely no chance of catching him at our third one either, Westferry, because we were stuck on the DLR. Luckily we managed to get to Limehouse in plenty of time to see a much more subdued David pass us by. We decided not to bother trying to catch him at the Tower of London, as there was a pretty good chance he would have passed us by before we got there ourselves; deciding instead to head straight for the end of the route.

We made it back to St James Park in time to see David making slow but steady progress for the last half mile. He was so tired he only just managed to wave at us as he passed by. A few minutes later he crossed the finish line doing a sprint clocking in just under five and a half hours; and nearly 8,000 people from the back. Pretty impressive for a first attempt.

Posted by Antz at 11:11 PM | Permalink | | |

Saturday, April 16, 2005

As it is Marathon weekend David, our friend Pat and I were in hanging around various bars in the seedier parts of Soho in between shopping opportunities. Wandering back from the bar in The Yard I noticed that there was a poster for über-funny cabaret duo Topping and Butch on the wall just inches from my head. According to the poster they'd been on at the Soho Theatre all week and this evening's performance was the last one. I suddenly get excited (and according to David I start to make some rather strange noises).

A whole range of thoughts rush to the front of my mind, battling for prime processing time - can we go? will it be sold out? how do we get tickets? what did we have planned anyway? where am I? who am I? Anyway I digress. David is very much aware (as is anyone else who'll listen) that Topping and Butch are the funniest comedy act i've ever seen and so I shouldn't have been at all surprised when he reached into his pocket and pulled out three tickets for the Soho Theatre. Excited is not the word. Actually, excited IS the word.

It turns out that we'd been going from bar to bar for the sole purpose of David finding a Topping and Butch poster so I could 'accidentally' notice it and get all excited. It obviously worked; I got excited.

I'm not going to sit here and review the show. What's the point? I certainly can't remember it all, and what was funny at the time probably won't come across well by the time i've beaten the comic timings to within an inch of their lives. But, they were still brilliantly funny, and (shhhh, don't tell anyone) Butch looks incredibly horny in his red harness and shorts.

Posted by Antz at 11:59 PM | Permalink | | |

Friday, April 15, 2005

I've been going on about the long-running three month notice period and today it finally came to an end; as of 5.30pm today I'm no longer the General Manager of Oneposter.com and Grindstore.com.

It all feels slightly unreal to me at the moment to be honest. I've spent several years building the business from scratch and then walked away with nothing to show for it except a few more wrinkles and a couple of extra pounds.

I've got mixed feelings about my departure; on one hand I'm looking forward to the new adventures ahead of me but on the other I am angry that I had to give up a job I loved because someone was hell-bent on making my life difficult.

Posted by Antz at 9:27 PM | Permalink | | |

Thursday, April 14, 2005

As my last day at work approaches i'm starting to feel more like some wise sage rather than a ecommerce manager. There seems to be a steady stream of people visiting me to seek guidance on some thing of great mystery. "Master, what is the meaning of PhP?", "Master, how do we maintain the homepages?".

Posted by Antz at 11:22 PM | Permalink | | |

Tuesday, April 12, 2005

There's something wrong with the central heating at the house which means that the radiators downstairs need bleeding all the time. Whenever the central heating is doing its thing you can hear tiny bubbles of air whizzing around the pipes like microscopic formula one racing cars. It's not rocket science to dal with the racket; you just use a little bleed key to let the air out of the rads one by one. That is, except for one in the hall.

Normally the hall radiator doesn't need bleeding, and this is a bonus as unlike all the others in the house this one doesn't have a little keyhole it has a strange large nut and what looks like a hose connection. Sadly today (judging by the noise) it needed to have the air beaten out of it so I had to go and get a spanner so I could operate.

I carefully started to turn the nut and waited for the sound of air coming out. Nothing. I unscrewed it some more. Still Nothing. A few more turns and the nut came out altogether. Again, nothing.

It is at this moment I should have stopped what I was doing and turned both valves of the radiator off. Sadly, I didn't. Instead I touched what appeared to be a very small pin inside the hole and suddenly WHOOSH. The small pin shot across the room closely followed by gallon upon gallon of dirty water.

I quickly jammed my finger onto the bleed hole like some Dutch boy with his finger in a leaking damn. Water is everywhere. I tried to work out what I could do. If I moved gallons more water would come gushing out and I if I stayed put I'd be found by David several days later dead with my fingers still holding back the tide.

I looked around and found a dressing gown hanging over the banister and decided I might be able to use it to stiffle the torrants of water while I grabbed a bucket or bowl or whatever. I grabbed it and it becomes immediately obvious that it is one of the worst ideas I've ever had. Within .45 of a second the gown is soaked and water is again pouring onto the floor.

By now I'm really panicking. The house is flooding and there seems to be nothing I can do to stop it. I suddenly notice that there is a pack of three metal planters next to the front door which hadn't quite made it to the garden. I use a foot to drag them over and fight with the plastic packaging with my spare hand so I can separate them. I get one free and stick it in front of the bleed valve, then another and then another. By the time the last one is filling up I've managed to start screwing the bleed valve back into the hole and the water has easied to a trickle.

The tide may have stopped but i'm stood in a couple of inches of water with tubes full of dirty liquid. That's the last time I mess around with radiators. I'm calling some fit young plumber to have a look next time.

Posted by Antz at 9:49 PM | Permalink | | |

Monday, April 11, 2005

This Sunday my partner David is running the Flora London Marathon as part of 'Team Big Issue' and is attempting to raise £1500 in sponsorship for the Big Issue Foundation (which is the charity that runs alongside the world-famous Big Issue magazine and which helps the homeless help themselves). Trouble is he is in serious need of more sponsorship as he is about £1100 short at the moment and the 26 mile race is only days away.

So this is a bit of an appeal on his behalf. If you can spare the cash and would like to sponsor David please take a trip to his Justgiving.com page and put yourself down for whatever you can afford. It is, after all, a very good cause.

Posted by Antz at 9:21 PM | Permalink | | |

Saturday, April 09, 2005

Imagine the scene. It's a sunny Saturday afternoon in April in Windsor and members of the Royal Family are walking down the steps of St Georges Chapel having just witnessed the blessing of the marrage of the Prince of Wales to Camilla Parker-Bowles. Queeny Rosebud and Phil pile into their car and hurtle back up the hill to the castle while Charles and Camilla take an opportunity to meet 'their' public.

Showly two hired coaches drive up outside of the chapel and all the remaining members of the Royal Family climb on-board ready for the journey to the castle. Coaches! Run-of-the-mill hired through the Yellow Pages coaches! If there was one thing I didn't think i'd probably ever see in my lifetime would be most of the Royals on a coach as if they were about to go out for a day at the seaside. Maybe they are real people after all.

Posted by Antz at 8:13 PM | Permalink | | |

Wednesday, April 06, 2005

Why is it that anyone who provides an online service seems to have a clause in their contract where they can stop providing it for a few days without you being to do anything about it?

I haven't been receiving any email for the last 48 hours as there has been a problem with the NTLworld server that my email goes to before all the spam gets striped out by Spamarrest. I'd assumed that while NTL were carrying out the essential maintenance my mail would simply be stuck the ether somewhere, however I've now discovered that all my mail has been bounced back to the senders instead. It would have been nice for NTL to have at least warned me that this was a possibility. Sadly there's f*ck all I can do about it.

I can't really remember why I use NTL to route my mail anyway as my Graphicjunkie.com hosting includes its own POP accounts. I think it goes back to the days when Antzonline.com was hosted by UK2 and they didn't offer POP accounts so my mail had to get forwarded to someone who did. So, any, my lunch today was spent quickly switching over all my email settings so that mail stopped getting bounced back from the evil NTL servers. Everything is now peaceful and carm and all the lovely spam can flood back into my account.

Posted by Antz at 1:16 PM | Permalink | | |

Tuesday, April 05, 2005

As I have a contract mobile I get the chance to upgrade my phone each year for next to nothing. Sadly my choice of phones is pretty limited as my monthly spend is minimal and i'm not rich enough right now to splash out a couple of hundred quid on something really special. Having enjoyed the last year with my Moto I would probably have stuck out a few more months with it however something's going wrong with the earphone and it's almost impossible to hear anyone who phones me up.

So exit Mojo and enter the new Sanyo S750 3G phone. My new companion for the next 12 months. It's a bit larger than the Mojo but looks pretty good so far. I can now do video calls... except I don't know anyone else with the 3G technology. I obviously need to make some 3G-wired friends.

Posted by Antz at 8:27 PM | Permalink | | |

Monday, April 04, 2005

It's official... three month's notice is far too long. No matter how hard you try it is almost impossible to stay as enthusiastic about your job as you once were and as the months drift on and on you just can't wait for the final day. Well, that's how it feels to me. I'm just starting the eleventh week of my notice period and I'm just finding it difficult to keep myself motivated.

It's especially bad in my case as I'm not being replaced as such. Various staff have been brought in to handle parts of my job but there isn't any short-term plan to employ an Antz replacement.

Posted by Antz at 5:32 PM | Permalink | | |

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