Odd Thomas Odd Blog

For the past few years, Christmas has brought more than its fair share of surprises ... financial ones, that is. You can pretty much guarantee that something will happen that will involve forking out several hundred pounds at a point when you really can't afford to. As I have just been paid, I was planning to hold back on buying stuff for myself and use this money for purchasing the majority of this year's presents. No such luck! Whilst cooking tonight's dinner, the nine-year-old hob decided to cook more than just the contents of the pan and tried heating the worktop, too. Personally, I'm not into flame-grilled pasta, so opted to douse the unit in cold water (after switching it off of course!), and placed a large pan of cold water on it to help take the heat away. Ooh, déja vu moment there just reading over this first bit ... weird! Anyway, I don't suppose you can see it in this pic, but there is a nice puddle of water surrounding the heating element to try and ...

Have you been horribly ill at a friend's place and are wondering how to apologise? Well, wonder no more and try Serenata Flowers for all your apologising needs - they've never let me down yet!!

Crikey, what a weekend! As I've been staying up late recently (my system is just about capable of playing Crysis ), I ended up sleeping in longer on Saturday than I had originally intended, which meant racing round town trying to find the last bits for the US Serviceman uniform I was trying to put together. I have to say a big thanks to eBay users epic_militaria, daveblower and maxmoo2 who all provided a sterling service getting my bits to me in time - thanks guys!! For those of you that haven't read any previous posts, this post should explain the need for the outfit... So, I arrived, all dressed up in my gear and camo face paint ... 15 minutes late! My sense of time is getting worse. I think I knew about one-third of the people there, but have only met them a couple of times so was outside of my comfort zone again. All good stuff to tell the life coach tomorrow!! The host, Julie Noted, had done a great job organising the Café Resistance and laying on some quality food wh...

Good question and, going by the news today , the answer is a resounding: "NO!" What a bunch of incompetent, bumbling idiots !! Ignoring the fact that the first thing they have done is to blame a junior - who, lets face it, would have been told what to do by someone senior anyway - this type of data should never, never, never be left floating around on disks or mobile devices. And I mean, NEVER !! This is the type of data that should be stored in a centralised location under a strict security regime, with strict access and usage protocols. Anybody else find it interesting that the preliminary of the UK Data Protection Act 1998 (c. 29) *, under section 2 Sensitive Personal Data , doesn't cover your personal financial data?? The following is extracted directly from preliminary of the above site: 2 Sensitive personal data In this Act “sensitive personal data” means personal data consisting of information as to— (a) the racial or ethnic origin of the data subject, (b) his pol...

Leeds . Just the very mention of the place makes my stomache turn. Well, to be fair, more specifically the phrase "The Leeds Office". I have no objection to Leeds at all as a place ... I mean, how can you when they have stuff like the Carling Weekend going on?! However, our customer has an office there and this is currently the source of the wall imprint on my forehead ... I look like I'm turning into a troll or something, with textured rocky features and a constant scowl. All I need to do is cultivate the unibrow and stick out my bottom lip, and I'll be there. Unfortunately, tomorrow sees me taking my sorry little troll behind to this very place. I am not looking forward to this ... I always come away having dark thoughts and wondering how I can improve my CV . Wish me luck!

It is with sadness that I must announce the early demise of one of my tenants. Yes, one of my little Ladybird friends has suffered a fatal blow, literally ... well, its his/her own fault for diving down the back of my shirt! Let that be a lesson learned: you wanna get a feel of my hot bod, ask first!