200 OK

This is just a quick rant post really.  A couple of weeks ago I was on the way to Milton Keynes to geek it out with a load of peeps at toy soldiers. On the way we stopped to get a bit of food but mainly stock up on drinks of alcoholicyness.

The Tesco’s extra was packed out with shoppers so we decided to use the self service machine - what a mistake.

First a little rant about this machine, its supposed to be easy? pffff, I scanned all my beer through and of course not thinking at the time, some fkin member of staff needs to come to the self service machine and check you look ‘25′ and push a button before you can continue.  Ok fine we’re done it’s asking me for some cash, at this point i’m thinking this is one of the most clinical shopping experiences of my life. I love technology but I must be a bit oldschool in the back of my head.

I was actually missing some spotty chavvy teen chewing gum, or a sour faced old crow who resents the fact shes 60 an working with chavvy teens or a foreign student who smiles far to much and utters words you understand 50% of. Not stereotyping till workers of course but in my experience those are the groups that 73.7% of them fit into.

So I get my card out, my brand new shinny HSBC debit card which i’v already used in a few places. My mate Neil who’s just done the self service thing before me advises me I might need to hold my card in place as the cradle is a bit dodgy. So I do this, enter my pin….  errror wrong pin, ok I might of entered my pin in wrong, the same pin i’v used for the last 11 years, eeerrroooor, I continue and then eventually the machine says ‘Last chance…’ on the screen! like its mocking me, like i’m actually a thief trying out 9999 possible combinations so i can get my hands on a few cans of Heineken.

At this point the machine tells me my pin or chip or something has been locked and by this time a queue of people are amassing behind me, no doubt pissed off with some bloke punching number after number into a machine, I know i’d piss me off.

So in the rush my mate Neil still stood there, uses his card… which works and we get the fk out of there.

So panic sets in on the way back to the car, what’s wrong with my card? has it been locked? I need money for the rest of the week…. argh I best give HSBC a call. So stupidly but understandably not having HSBC’s number on my phone I called good olde 118118 and got a bloke called George, (George must be a popular name in Asian countries) and asked to be put though - second mistake

Good thing about HSBC is once you actually get through they are one of the few companies that most often have someone you can tell is from the UK on the other end of the phone, I’m not racist I think most people are equally rubbish but when a telephone service is concerned you’d hope for someone who shares your first language as their own first language, it kinda makes sense don’t you think?  Do you get a lot of disabled folks in wheel chairs acting as PE teachers? no, no you don’t its not practical is it!

Anyway I have a chat to this lady at HSBC and she just says it’ll probably be ok, I just need to go to any cash machine and it might ask me to reset something and I need to call again while at the machine if there are any further problems.  So as it happens we need to get some petrol which luckily has a HSBC cash machine!, I put my card in, type in my pin and what happens? success.. normally screen normal options everything normal…  So i gets me a tenner out to pay Neil back for his card aid and we jump back in the car for a night of beer, games and good times.

I swept this little episode under the mental carpet until this morning when my phone bill came through:

27 Feb 10 19:15:02 118118 All Day 00:05:25 £6.915

holy fucking titiyfucking muther son bitches! NEVER call 118 from your mobile, NEVER EVER let them put you through, you get charged through them for the call! at whats that? £1+ a minute! What if it had been a big problem with my card or I was on hold for a lot longer….  Fuck 118, i’m gonna start calling them from phone boxes drunk and giving them abuse like a 12 year old from now on.

This has more or less convinced me i need a smartphone with the interwebs on the move, it’d of avoided this horrible situation. Now if only they made one with a decent camera ugh woe is me.

Age, Its odd.

It is that time of year again, 365 days have past since the last time and I am now a year older. My twenties are on the downward spiral of running out and I must say it is rather strange.  As you get older I think you kind of reach a plateau where age does not seem to mean as much as it did.

For example I have a really diverse group of friends (age group wise) to those I had when I was 18-21. Back then I generally hung around with folks who were also about that age with a few exceptions of older people who in your youth you look up to some what just because they are older. Now that I am that older(ish) person I seem to know and hang out with people ranging from 20ish all the way into their 40’s and the age gap each way seems a lot more ‘ok’ then it did when I was younger. The mainstay of the people I know is still around my own age but its interesting how as you get older the line seems to blur about how you interact with people of varying ages.

I guess this is impart due to the ‘finding your self’ factor in that by your mid twenties you generally know who you are, what you like and are fairly secure and rounded as a person. You can chill with older people and not do it since they’re ‘cool’ because they’re older but because they have reached this level too and are just refining it, not making vast changes. You are on their level of maturity but still keep back a a bit of humbleness and respect for their extra years.

With younger people that you know, you can see the steady growth in them and you may well be that ‘cooler’ older person in their eyes but it is not a feeling of superiority. You see interesting stuff such as how they show signs of the paths you followed but often come up with interesting and new takes on the world that you didn’t even consider.

I am talking about normal people here, not chavvy twats etc… These people never get past the mental age of 13 because that’s where their reading age stopped.

So being my age is kinda nice, I’m still young enough to have a laugh and enjoy my self but have some years and experience behind me which really pay dividens in this shindig known as life.

Why do I not celebrate my birthday?

People get a bit dumbfounded when I tell them I don’t celebrate my birthday and it really just comes down to two key reasons really.

The lesser of these two is that I really don’t like being the center of attention. Now this may seem a bit strange because anyone who knows me knows i’m not really an introverted type (especially when drunk!) I am quite loud and often crass and it can get me in trouble at times. Its just when all the attention is directed at me in something like a birthday setting that I get uncomfortable I just don’t like people being nice and making a fuss of me en-mass.

The second and main reason is the same as why I don’t really celebrate Christmas, I don’t see the point.

See it sounds very miserable an Scrooge like when you put it like that but it couldn’t be further from the truth! I think people should value and look after the people in their life all year round. I don’t feel a need to celebrate and have a fuss made of me just to mark another 365 day cycle of when my mum had a very painful day ;). It is not important to me that this day of all days should mark some kind of Nick free for all.  For me it just (even if it isn’t intended) comes across as false and a way for people to release their guilt for not being a very good friend/partner/parent/whatever over the last year, no one treats you normally on your birthday its silly, there is no difference between today yesterday or tomorrow or next week…

I try to have a good time with people and make sure they are ok throughout the year, sure I don’t have time to pay everyone the attention I’d like or i do it in funny ways but I know they know if they need me i’ll be there. That is what is important really and wearing a silly hat, eating some cake and getting smashed isn’t a celebration of my life, the people in it and the day to day relationships I have with them are!

This is just my opinion on it and i’v not met many others who share it. A birthday is such a fundamental concept that’s been drummed into our heads since before we could talk that it’s hard for people to see my logic and even if they do it’s normally brushed aside as silly.

I’m fine with other people celebrating their birthday and inviting me out (please continue!) as it means something to them which is fine and i’ll have a great time with them. It’s kinda like having Christian friends who get married in a church, I’ll come along to the church and be happy and enjoy their wedding… does not mean I’m gonna find Jesus :P.

Thank you to all the people who called/texted/facebooked/emailed/msn’d even though they know I don’t celebrate it (hehe its that childhood brainwashing, ye cant help it) today. As I have said before just keep being my friend, talking to me, inviting me, listening to me, helping me, letting me help you, all year round and that’s the biggest pressie you could ever give me.

This is a bit of a rant. Much to many commentators opinions of how shit Windows Vista is, including the king of all geeks Chris Pirillio I decided to install it back in October. Now I have a very technical job in the IT industry where I develop websites, databases and shit loads of other Internet type solutions (on windows XP i might add) so when I get home all I wanna really do PC wise is check out some websites and maybe play a game or chat to some mates.

For the most part Windows Vista does this alright, well maybe not on the game front as I’v had several games just refuse to work, I can’t claim this is Vista at fault however as I’v never tried them on an XP machine. 

Try ANYTHING, anything else on this pile of shit and all you get is frustration and bullshit. For example today I got a new MP3 player and have been now trying for 3 hours to get 30GB of songs onto it. I’v tried the software that’s come with it and i’v accessed it as a direct link in my computer and every so often what happens, cluck clucjk bang fuck i’m dead vista gives up. It kinda doesnt die and hang if you drag 3-4 albums at a time, which is a cunt to do for about 260 albums and even then it still seems to do it at random. 

I’v now resorted to my server machine which is running XP, and guess what! no fucking problems what so ever. It’s chugging along pumping album after album onto the device with no issue. 

Fuck Windows Vista time after time it just ends up being the operating system equivalent of taking a turd and getting picasso to paint a pretty picture all over it, its still a fucking turd.

Windows XP, Oh look... it works.

As in coins… does anyone notice that after a rather brutal night out you are left with coins, lots and lots of fucking coins. 

Take last night for example here is the state of my wallet:

There is at least 10-12 quid in there in coins is it not just funny how when you get drunk you loose the ability to count and the urge to even bother. How simple it is to just hand over a tenner for a few drinks and drop the change into the ever growing collection in you pocket. 

One of the worse places I have found for this kind of behaviour is the Pad club in bedford because its so fuckin dark inside, in fact I don’t think i have ever bought a drink in there with coins I can’t see it working.

The problem with having so much change in your pocket is that you get this (well i do) feeling that it isn’t really money, it does not hold the same significance or pride of place in your wallet than a tenner ot twenty pound note does. In that regard you just fritter those coins away on anything while at a shop or something and don’t feel bad when they are gone. Which is what i’m gonna do right now…  diet coke and whatever takes my fancy from the local shop woooo.