Odd Thomas Odd Blog

Moment 1: My family are sitting round the garden table and my Mum decides it's time to have a smoke . With barely a break in what he is doing, my five-year-old nephew pipes up: "Grandma, how many cigarettes do you have to smoke before you die?" Priceless.  Shame it hasn't stopped her... Moment 2: My Dad is browsing the web for anniversary ideas and gets distracted by a video of large women having a makeover.  Cue my Mum walking in to see what he is doing... Mum: "Why are you looking at fat birds having a make-over?" Dad: "I'm looking for something for you" Even after 40 years of marriage, he still hasn't learned!!!! Moment 3: Actually, this is still pretty fresh as it is the reason I am currently writing blog posts at 2am! After deciding to study late in order to try and get a little ahead, I finally left the Uni buildings at some point after 11pm.  As expected, the park and ride buses were no longer running, so I decide...

Whoa, has it really been 7 weeks since I last posted?  I know I don't have that many readers, but sorry for the silence, things have been a bit hectic here! In fact, so much has been happening, that it's probably easier to give a quick bullet point of the main events, otherwise, this would be something of an epic posting which I guarantee you won't reach the end of! Firstly, I should say congratulations to my parents who celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary at the beginning of September.  They were intending to go away to celebrate together, but decided they would rather have a nice meal with family.  Unfortunately, The Woolpack , where the meal was booked didn't do a very good job of the booking, so the meal wasn't as nice as it could have been. After the rather unfortunate and ironic drowning of my little iPod Nano I wrote about in my last post , I ended up ordering a replacement directly from the Apple site: a nice little fifth generation orange one,...

After a week of not running, it was well past time to head back out and get some more training in now that the Great North Run is looming almost overhead. With the incredible deluge of rain passed (and my flat still dry ... for now), I decided to risk a run, knowing it would be hard and that I would quite possibly get wet.  I didn't realise just how wet I would get so was a little unprepared for the second deluge that fell, my shirt proving that it could wick moisture in both directions. Unfortunately, I also discovered that the amount of rain was a tad too much for my little iPod Nano, which couldn't keep going and finally drowned ... right in the middle of Queen's Don't Stop Me Now .  Hmmmm.  

I've never been particularly clued up when it comes to music, it's more a case of if I happen to hear something I like, I usually end up buying the album.  The end result is a music collection that is more eclectic than the spirit collection on top of my fridge - though far less potent! The latest addition to the collection is a bit of a departure to the more upbeat tones of Train 's Hey, Soul Sister or V V Brown 's Shark in the Water .  After hearing just a clip of Islands, I've ended up with The xx being played to death on the way to and from work: Okay it's a bit on the dark side , but this one has managed to get into my head and won't shift, like an itch that can't be scratched ... which is fine at the moment, but if I start wearing black clothes, looking moody and dying my hair black , someone come and slap some common sense into me!  

At what point do you draw the line when you advertise your every thought and feeling on the social web?  Before or after you realise that it impacts on others? Like it or not, the social web has obviously caught on in a major way: Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, Bebo, Twitter and many, many more like them waiting in the wings, hoping to be the next big thing.  People are sharing everything from the most mundane aspects of their lives to their most personal thoughts and feelings; as a means of self-expression and narcissism, there is nothing else like it . Combine this with an 'always-on' culture and the ease and speed of information spread is quite phenomenal. However, this freedom of expression and near-instant feedback comes at a price: we are now so eager to tell everyone our current thoughts and feelings that we forget, or do not consider, that what we say may have an impact on others. Perhaps I am being old-fashioned, but there are some things that should not be expres...

For the past couple of weeks, I've had a tough time keeping my lips sealed about a bit of very good news regarding BikerBetty, my friend with the Dirk Benedict obsession crush. BB is a big supporter of Little John's House , a Romanian orphanage that was set up in 1993 for Ionut Balan and which now cares for six children, as well as providing outreach support and a summer school for other disadvantaged children in the area. A few weeks ago, with Little John's House in mind, she took a late night visit to the Vodaphone World of Difference website after seeing one of their posters on the tube and decided to apply for this year's programme, not particularly expecting to get anywhere but at least it was worth a shot. Within a few weeks of applying, BB found herself in the final group of eight individuals that have been given the opportunity to implement a project for their chosen charity, due to start at the end of September! This is an amazing opportunity for a...

Techies enjoy having a chuckle over some of the support stuff we have to handle from time to time but there are times that even we do things that would make any normal person think "Huh??". Take, for example, the office I currently work in; an open plan area with a fair few people, all lined up in little rows which are generally grouped in the various teams.  Why, then, would someone instant message a person at the very next desk instead of just talking to them??? Huh?? Okay, I could understand if it was meant to be reasonably private, but when the person sitting next to you messages you to ask if you can send them some files, it's a tad on the crazy side.  Thankfully, there are only a small handful of people that do this ... though they're all on my row! On Monday, however, they took things a stage further when one of them picked up the phone and actually rang someone sitting two desks away.  That's about 8 feet. He could have psssssst in his ear at tha...