Odd Thomas Odd Blog

Well, as of 6pm tonight, I am officially the only one in the office for the next fortnight! With three people leaving in July and August, one off on a three-month sabbatical across the US with his other half, and another off on a two week break, we're now back down to the staffing levels we had about 8 months ago. It wouldn't be so bad, but half the work that needs to be done I know nothing about, so it looks like I'll be kept on my toes for a while. Aaaanyhoo, I am aware that my last post was not only lengthy, but a bit whingy, so its probably best that I stay off the work topic tonight and try to avoid the step-by-step accounts that make for good sleeping material! Last night, I was introduced to my new favourite series: Weeds . How great is this series?! I don't have Sky, so I have to make do with Sky Three on digital terrestrial and happened to stumble on it last night. I had never really paid any attention to the adverts for it before, but I caught the announcer ...

How often have you felt the need to wave your hands in the air and scream like a man possessed? And then follow that up by throwing yourself through a window with all the grace and panache of a breeze-block? Never? Okay, just me then! Yesterday, I had the pleasure of travelling to Leeds to one of our customer's regional offices. Because of everything going on around this latest project, I wasn't expecting it to be amongst the best days going ... and it wasn't ... The first sign that the day wasn't going to be amongst the best was when my neighbours downstairs returned from a night out at 2:15 this morning, turned on some annoying beat-beat-beat-beat-beat-beat-beat-y music, and proceeded to chat and laugh until after I left for Leeds ... at 6:00 in the morning. Needless to say, I wasn't the most alert person with only a couple of hours sleep under my heavy eyelids!! Unfortunately, when I set off I realised I was TomTom-less, so spent half-an-hour driving to work o...

I was just having a browse at some other blogs and stumbled on Paul Enderson's blog that included a video for a guy called Janez Jevnikar doing some spray-paint sci-fi art. Seriously impressive stuff... Spray Paint Art 1 - For more of the funniest videos, click here You can check out Janez' website here , though unfortunately there are only a couple of videos and there is not much by way of a gallery.

Today, I made a bit of a faux pas. Earlier in the week, it was my friend Abi's birthday and today she was having a BBQ to celebrate. Because I am so far behind with my studying, I figured on doing as much of this as possible and heading over there early evening, on the basis that if I went to the BBQ first I would spend the rest of the day there and get absolutely no studying done. What I didn't count on was everything wrapping up early. All the BBQs I have been to in the past have gone on well into the evening so I made the assumption that the same would happen here and that things would probably be a little more chilled by then. 7pm was my target time for leaving work*, but I didn't get as much done as I had hoped, so I stayed a bit longer. By 8pm, everyone had apparently gone home and they were in the process of clearing up. Some friend I turned out to be. Sorry, Abi. * Its easier to study at work as I have proper desk space there ... otherwise, I end up falling asleep...

So, you're probably wondering how it went on Thursday afternoon with the life coach? Okay, probably not, as chan ces are that I have spoken to you since then!! However, for those of you out of the loop for various reasons, then here's what happened... Those who know me well, know that I am not the bravest of people and so tend not to be very adventurous ... unless I can goad someone into keeping me company! As such, the thoughts of heading off to the life coach, driving round the really big parts of the M25 and into places I've never been before, sent my body into panic spasms that kept me bouncing back to the gents as though I'd got my knicker-elastic* caught in the toilet seat. Luckily, at that time of day the traffic wasn't too bad and I managed to get there a full 15 minutes before I was due, which gave me time to calm my system down. As luck would have it, LBC was having an holistic session where a guest was offering advice to callers. One young caller suff...

If you want to have a chuckle at a bad choice of words, take a look at this post by my mate, Foshie . You can see the original article at the Unison website. :-D

I hate to say it, but I have been a totally miserable git this past week, hence the reason for not posting. That, and the fact that I have been totally snowed under with both work and studying. Work is currently the usual slog of trying to get things done while people are off on holiday and having to defend myself against other peoples inactions and inadequacies, whilst as far as the studying goes, I am so far behind that my next assignment is nearly 3 weeks overdue and so is not likely to get marked :-( In the midst of all this, there is always a moment (or two), where I feel the need to take a break and step away from it all. On Saturday, I did exactly that and met J&A in town for a couple of drinks down at Caffé Nero * and, for a change, experienced something new. I started off with the usual cappucino that I drown in sugar to take away some of the sharpness of the coffee, and was then bought a Chai Latte . I'm not a big fan of really milky tea, and the idea of drinking it w...

You've seen the trailers and the posters and never been tempted, but now you're curious. You fancy a night in with the missus and she doesn't fancy any of your hard action stuff*, so should you grab a copy of this DVD? Well, I'm a big fan of Emma Thompson , and the plotline sounded similar to an idea for a book I was considering writing a number of years ago (only my version had a helluva lot more gore as I was heavily into horror novels back then), so curiousity got the better of me and I ended up buying it as part of a 3 for £20 deal at HMV**. The plot boils down to one question: how would you live your life if you knew you were about to die? As with all romantic comedies, there's a little bit of everything from the humour of the main character screwing up his chances to the emotional discovery that his death was inevitable. No escape. No happy ending. Nada. The more observant amongst you will delight in pointing out the continuity errors, but if you're oth...

We've all heard of people who have jobs that reflect their names in some manner, such as Cardinal Sin , the Archbishop of Manila, or Dr Alan Heavens at the Institute of Astronomy in Edinburgh*. Browsing around the web, there appears to be many names for this coincidence of naming, such as aptonym, aptronym or noministic determinism (try remembering that one!) [Edit: try searching for nominative determinism , coined by New Scientist magazine]. I'm either being dense or lazy, but no matter how hard I searched, I couldn't find a word that meant the opposite of this: namely, where a name is a contradiction of what it is, or what it is capable of. You're probably wondering where I am going with this? I warn you, its an anti-climax! Tring has a little area called Dolphin Square where there are a couple of benches and a couple of food shops, complete with CCTV: which is a little strange as there isn't really anything there to watch. About the most excitement seen in...

A couple of weeks ago, I succeeded in completing a website implementation using Immediacy CMS for one of our customers (feel free to check it out here *). A week later they went live and their CEO sent an email to them thanking everyone for a job well done and for all of the effort they put into it. Did our CEO - who also happens to be my line manager - mirror the gesture to his own staff? Did he buggery! Another successful project under my belt and he couldn't even congratulate me on a job well done. Thanks for the support! All week I have been carrying out further tweaks and adding in some nifty workaround coding to get round the limitations of several of the plugins, helping the girl at the customer site who has been lumbered with the content management. Its been great, helping someone do a successful job, and she is always grateful for the effort that is put in. Around 9am this morning, a box arrived by DHL with a logo for Bettys emblazoned on the side. At first, I thou...

Last night, I took a break from studying and went with my mates Foshie and Smithy to see the new Transformers movie. I have to confess that I was skeptical about it, and figured it would be another Hollywood big-bangs-equals-big-bucks approach to movie-making that seems to have been hitting the silver screen these past years: take Spiderman 3 as a prime example of Hollywood crassness *shudder*. However, a fair few people I know had already been to see Transformers and said it was like being 8 years old again. I have to confess that I wasn't the coolest kid at schoo l, having a tendency to bury my nose in an Enid Blyton adventure rather than gluing it to the TV, so it wasn't going to be possible for me to feel like a kid again watching this ... but it did grab my imagination! Despite my reservations, I thoroughly enjoyed the film. The humour was spot on, as was the action and, according to Smithy, so was the voice of Optimus Prime , which was a deep gravelly voice that suited...

When it comes to family entertainment my sister is up there with the best, providing many nights of humourous tales. However, she has some rather stiff competition in the form of her husband who, on a recent shout to a public disturbance, succeeded in CS -ing himself instead of his target. Classic!

Something I am still learning, and which I totally believe in, is to trust my instincts ... they seem to know more about what is going on around me than I do! On many occassions I have had a compulsion to pick something up as I leave home and discovered that it came in useful at some point during the day. Of course, the opposite of this is the nagging feeling that I have left home with something I really needed ... such as the wedding clothes for the party last weekend! It was probably a combination of these that helped to keep me reasonably calm during my repeated search of the flat for the missing negatives. Three nights I looked in the same places ... though I only went through the bins once, thank you very much ... all the while with the feeling that whilst I wasn't going to find them at my flat, they weren't totally lost ... yet. Wednesday lunchtime, I decided to check one final place and called my Mum. By this point, whilst I couldn't recall exactly what had happen...

Have you ever wondered if there are bigger forces in play around you, whilst you go about absorbed in your daily life? Either testing your resolve or rewarding you for good behaviour? Whilst undecided when it comes to views of God or an ultimate being, there are occasions when I am forced to stop and think about the possibility that someone ... or something ... is making sure I am kept aware that the universe is a LOT bigger than my little world! Take this past week, for example. Due to tiredness*, I didn't pay attention to what I was doing last Friday night and misplaced** something of great importance to someone who I am very close to. So close, in fact, that he asked me to be best man*** at his wedding in Sri Lanka. And he doesn't know ... unless he reads this ... Whilst visiting family at the weekend, I was reminded of a certain something in my possession that belonged to my cousin ... and I suddenly realised that I couldn't place exactly where it was. It was a defin...

After work tonight, I decided to hunt YouTube for some more parodies and came across this little chuckler: keep an eye out for Mr Soot!