Odd Thomas Odd Blog

Buying new gadgets is easy ... at least, that's the rumour going around and we all know to take rumours with a pinch of salt, don't we? When the iPad was first released, I was quite anti the idea as I couldn't see what use it could possibly be beyond being another glossy toy for Apple geeks to spray over.  Don't get me wrong, I admire Apple and their incredible success at taking an existing idea and making it their own; they believed in the product and their customers believed in their marketing.

My Dad always said that life gets faster the older you get and he wasn't wrong! With everything that has been happening these past few months, it seems there has barely been time to breathe, let alone bash out any ramblings in this blog ... the only reason I am doing so now is that crunch time is coming and I need to ramble  :-) Currently, I work on a customer site in Watford on a contract that replaced the one we had at our previous employment.  Unfortunately, as there has been no project work forthcoming (presumably since the customer has now realised they have to pay for work and, therefore, actually think about what they want ), these past five months have been filled with HUUUUUGE amounts of documentation, otherwise known as TEE-DEE-UM! However, on the plus side, it's been a long time that I enjoyed working with any group of people this much: KitKat is a constant source of amusement and a much-needed distraction from the daily grind, whilst DJ Flip-U ( ergophonic ) and...

Blogging is good for you. Fact. Well, good for Bloggers, not necessarily for the readers! If this article in Scientific American is to be believed - and there's no reason it shouldn't - blogging can be quite therapeutic, helping patients recover from surgery, and improving sleep* and memory. I can certainly agree with the memory aspect as it is approaching two weeks since my last post and I attempted to log in with the wrong credentials, something I hadn't had a problem with before. I guess you could argue that blogging is like Regaine for those with rapidly diminishing follicles: you're fine while you use it on a regular basis, but stop for any period and it quickly disappears back to its natural state. Unfortunately, my natural state is dazed and confused ... so, back to the keyboard!! What with work, rehearsals and training, I haven't really had a lot of time to do anything: I haven't even had the opportunity to learn my lines for the play , let alone ta...

Well, training for the Great North Run hasn't gone quite according to plan, but last night I did succeed in setting up the gadgets and widgets for tracking my training :-) I had refrained from getting sucked into the Nike and iPod combo, but the lure of glossy tech and the trendy adverts sucked me in and spat me out the other side, complete with green iPod Nano , Nike Shox Arraw trainers, a slick black'n'red Nike armband , Nike+ shoe widget thingy and a cool black-and-white shirt designed by a closet sci-fi costume designer*. Admittedly, the shirt is going to remain in the drawer for the time being as it currently emphasises my spare tyre and man boobs which, lets face it, isn't the prettiest site to be running round these parts. Then again, certainly not the ugliest, either! The calibration of the Nike kit was a bit annoying. After having calibrated for a 1.05 mile run I then tried to calibrate a walk for the same distance, only be told halfway around that the di...

...you get excited about the vacuum having all its suction back! I don't know what came over me, but after properly cleaning the vacuum last week, a slight thrill quivered through me as I turned it on for the first time today and it sucked up the carpet in an apparent attempt to eat it. Perhaps I'm imagining things, but I'm sure some of the carpet pile has been revived. However, that thrill didn't compare to the one I got when I received a mail from Apple yesterday saying my MacBook is on its way! Yay!!!

In something akin to a Biblical story line, I have finally succumbed to Steve Jobs' serpent* and bitten into the Apple ... I've ordered a MacBook! No longer shall I be exposed to the elements via open Windows (in theory, anyway) or require the finances and power grid of a small nation to run the latest OS ... I can also look forward to a better wardrobe**!! I've been dithering over them for a number of years now, but with the release of the new models and my cousin making the leap from PC to Mac, I finally took the plunge. It helps that I'm already getting into the Mac mindset with a burning desire to own an iPod Touch at some point in the future. Hopefully, very near in the future. So fingers crossed, within the next couple of weeks I will have a new machine in my grubby mitts to play with. I would probably be excited if I wasn't so nervous: things have a tendency to go wrong when I spend lots of money! If the past is anything to go by, one of two things will ha...

Trying to rehearse a play when your head is overheating and your sinuses are fighting the Battle of the Bugs is not recommended! A couple of days ago, I appear to have picked up this year's winter bug from someone in the family and have been fighting it off with a combination of paracetamol (which I rarely take), and hot honey and lemon ... with a shot of Jack Daniels, of course! I thought I was doing pretty good at keeping it away, but tonight it tried real hard to get a stranglehold on my system, turning my brain to mush so that all my sentences came out wrong and I suffered from more giggle-fits than ever before ... my leg now has little welts on it where I was pinching myself to stop the laughter: lucky I bite my nails or it would look like I'd been attacked by a Christmas Elf with nail clippers! The chuckling disappeared pretty quick when I discovered that, for the second night of trying, all the petrol stations are out of petrol. After getting back from the family visit ...