aardvark.dj : archive of old site

I love Saturdays. They're like weekdays but without any work.
Another weekend without any discos, which is nice in a way because I don't have to rush around like a madman to get everything done in time to go out and do my gig, but with only a week until I'm redundant I could do with the money.

I took the advice of the consultant from the course on Wednesday and went out and bought myself a new suit. We went into Birmingham and, although I was sceptical at first, when I tried on a suit of the sort of colour that she suggested I could see the difference. It immediately made me look healthier and less anaemic. Originally I was only gonna spend about £200 on a suit and shirt but when I went to Kensington Freak Sharon made me try on a 3 piece they had there and she reckoned it looked the dogs danglies so we ended up with that, a Peter Werth shirt, a tie and some shoes for £330. Ouch!

Today I have been mostly playing on the South Park Studio. I built a self portrait:

G'night.

After a particularly bad afternoon at work today I wasn't going to post another entry today. Self pity is a horrible thing and, in hindsight, incredibly selfish. Once again, as soon as I got home my spirits were lifted. After struggling for an hour, I got him to go to sleep and I surfed through some blogs. There's some impressive stuff out there. Today I visited: A project to list blogs by the age of the writer, A blog tracking the happenings at Google written by someone unconnected with Google, a (discontinued?) blog by a 7yr old with some pranking tips that I might copy.

Sharon is really suffering now. Just 5 weeks until Connor is born but she is so uncomfortable and tired all the time she just wants it over and done with. She's sleeping for about 2 hours during the day and still going to bed before 9pm. Its really starting to make her miserable now. I wish there were something I could do.

England v Brazil meant that the roads were empty this morning and I arrived at work on time!!! The enthusiasm for this match is so over the top that it's almost infectious. Listening to the radio I found myself starting to root for England. So I promptly turned it off and put a CD on instead. It's the only way of avoiding it.
I got to the office and the place is almost deserted. It's only a game people! ;-)

Must get my last post in before Midnight tonight. It's not been a bad day all in all. I'm still not doing the stuff at work that I should be, but I did enough today that I didn't feel completely stressed about it. I have started to worry about where the money is going to come from after next week.
Sharon's got 5 weeks to go now and she's feeling really uncomfortable all the time and very tired. I guess that's why I've got time to mess about with this thing in the evening. The one (or one of the) good thing about being off work after next week is that I'll be around when Connor is born. I'm really looking forward to it.
Sometimes it's difficult to keep up the happy face for everyone else though. You know?

A whole host of internet goodies for you today. Even though I was quite busy and reasonably productive at work.

The Japanese Job. Excellent remix of the theme from The Italian Job to tie in with the World Cup. The download-able video is excellent.
A reminder of the evils of drink. Just make sure that you're the one holding the camera if you go out.
Just when you thought it was safe to return to the deeps of the ocean. Something is out there.
The robots are escaping!. Somewhere there's a group of sci-fi writers looking smug and going "I told you so, but would you listen? Noooooo!"
Only the UK Ministry of Defence could f*ck up this bad.
Why does this never happen when I'm out shopping?
Warner Brothers Site!!! All your (my) favourite cartoons smushed into one place. Bargain!!

I don't like football (or soccer if you're American), but the following quote tickled me. (Background: Roy Keane was captain of the Irish national side but was sent home after the following outburst to the manager. Ireland went on to do better than they have for ages, reaching the last 16).

"Who the f*** do you think you are, having meetings about me? You were a cr*p player, you are a cr*p manager. The only reason I have any dealings with you is that somehow you are manager of my country and you're not even Irish, you English c***. You can stick it up your b****cks." - Roy Keane to Ireland's manager Mick McCarthy before the world Cup.

Well, the course was pretty depressing, in a trivial "doesn't really matter" type of way. Apparently I'm wearing the wrong colours. Because I'm light skinned and fair haired I should be wearing muted, warm, light colours instead of the strong, deep colours that I like. Think autumn (fall) instead of summer.

I find that I dress a little flamboyantly almost as a way of generating the confidence in me that I otherwise wouldn't have. A little bit of attention seeking goes in there too. I like to be a little different.

I turned up in a dark charcoal 3 peice suit with a dark red, almost maroon shirt which has a white collar and a white tie. The tutor (sorry, consultant) tells me that the clothes are so overpowering that she sees them before me.

Well, I've got an interview next week so I reckon its gotta be worth a try. If nothing else it gives me an excuse to go clothes shopping at the weekend.

Something funny:

A gallery of advertising parodies

Jesus. Its midnight. Time to go do the statutory lieing in bed trying to get to sleep for an hour or two.

I've had a few visitors to my blog from the clubbing communities I post to. And they've all gone "WTF? Whats a blog?". For those of you who are unsure, the BBC website has a good article on the phenomenon and there's a blogger's dictionary.

I was feeling quite down by the end of work today, but as soon as I'm in the car coming home my mood lifts. Opening the door and hearing the cry "Daaaaddddyyyyeee!!!!" as James comes barreling through living room toward me has a way of wiping away the concerns of the day.

Although the 90 minute struggle to get him to go to sleep brings on a stress of its own. But I wouldn't be without it.

Chloe's doing a project on the Vikings. Its endeering how she assumes that I will have all the information she needs, or will be able to get it. Thank god for the internet. With its help, she still thinks her Daddy's a genius.

Want some silliness? This guy is a freak!!! Honestly, the stuff some people will put on the web.

Wow! There's such a lot that you can do with this blogging thing.
You'll probably notice the "Rate my Blog" thing on the right hand side. I'm desperate for validation. Vote for me, make my life feel worth while.
Then there's the "Blogsnob" text advert; the seemingly random text just above the web counter. This is a link to another random weblog. I have no responsibility for, or control over, what you'll get if you click on it but it might be fun. The sight you go to should have another on of these adverts. Keep on clicking and see where it takes you.

Sharon got a wierd phone call this afternoon. When she answered, nobody spoke but there were some strange mumbling noises and she coud hear someone in the background. It wasn't until she recongnised a voice saying "That's nice what've you got there?" that she realised, James had taken her mobile phone out of her bag. He must have put it in his pocket and sneaked it to Nursery with him. God knows who else he phoned before he got the home number.

Obviously, I'm pretty new to blogging. I'm trying to find my way around and just about the only way to do that is to check out some other blogs. And I'm thinking; Does the world need another blog? What do I contribute that nobody else does?
The answer is probably "nothing". But its nothing in way that nobody else does.
Am I doing this for me or for you (if there even is a you)? Ask me in a couple of months.

It occurs to me that a blog is a bit like big brother but without the prize money. Much as I claim to hate the program, there's something eminently watchable about the live coverage. Forget the highlights, they never show the good bits, get the live stuff on E4. Its a voyeuristic peek into someone else's life and it can be quite cathartic to see someone act as foolishly as you do.

I've added an email address and guestbook to my blog so that you can talk to me if you want. The email address is an anonymous hotmail account and if I find I'm getting flamed or spammed too much I'll close it down. The guest book is a freebie one so unfortunately it has advertising. If it is used enough then I might cough up for a paid one.
Today is a good day. I don't know why but I don't feel to bad today. Perhaps its because I managed to get breakfast. Perhaps its because I've only got 5 1/2 working days left.
Its one of those days at work where I seem to be busy all the time but I haven't managed to get any further forward on the important things I'm working on. That's not good when you've only got 5 days left. I can see next week being a touch stressful!

Ok. The first time in ages that I leave the house on time (7.30) and I get stuck in traffic at some roadworks. Sometimes I wonder if anyone would notice if I just hid under the duvet for an entire day. Not that I'd be able to stay there as soon as James (my 3 yr old son) realised I was at home and started jumping up and down on me to get me out of bed.
Oh well, there'll be plenty of time for that in a couple of weeks if I don't get myself another job.
I've just added a counter to the blog to see whether anyone's actually reading the drivel I write or if I'm just pissing in the wind (what a bizarre saying!).

Yey!! Check it out. I'm up and about before half past seven. For the first time in 4 weeks, I might actually get to work on time today.
I forgot to put the bins out for the binmen last night though. Doh! Remembered just after I went to bed last night and decided I was gonna get up and do it this morning. I missed them by about 3 minutes. Bugger!

OK. so I've spent the last couple of months slowly but surely building a website for aardvark.dj. And now for some reason, I just can't get it listed on any search engines, especially my prime target, Google.
I've read all the resources you're supposed to. I spent ages researching my keywords as recommended by keyword-optimization-tools.com/. I increased the density of the resulting target keywords by including them in the meta tags, the body text, the ALT tags, the table SUMMARY tags, everything you're supposed to do. But still I'm not listed.

Bugger.

I've done bugger all at work today other than set up this weblog.
Its pretty hard to stay motivated when you've only got 2 weeks left and none of your previous work has seen any real recognition.
I'm a VAT manager for a multinational firm and I've worked here 18 months. When I started I was quite good at technical questions but for the last 18 months I've not been able to do anything except be a spreadsheet jockey. My technical skills have gone rusty. I never thought I'd say this but I yearn for a decent VAT question. I actually miss the debates with my peers that I used to find so tedious. Funny what life brings isn't it?

Something funny that I found today:

PILOTS HELL
Mac died at the controls of his plane and went to pilots' hell, where he found a hideous devil and three doors.
The devil was busy escorting other pilots to various "hell rooms."
"I'll be right back--don't go away," said the devil, and he vanished.
Sneaking over to the first door, Mac peeked in and saw a cockpit where the pilot was condemned to forever run through pre-flight checks.
He slammed that door and peeked into the second. There, alarms rang and red lights flashed while a pilot had to avoid one emergency after another. Unable to imagine a worse fate, Mac cautiously opened the third door.
He was amazed to see many beautiful, scantily clad flight attendants answering to a captain's every whim. He quickly returned to his place seconds before the devil reappeared.
"Okay, Mac," said the devil, "Which door will it be, number 1 or number 2?"
"Um, I want door number 3," answered Mac.
"Sorry," said the devil. "You can't have door number 3. That's flight attendants' hell."

Something useful that I found today:

www.iboogie.tv - a meta search engine that lays out the result in a heirarchical directory structure.

It starts. And so it may finish

Just what the world needs; another Blog.

Sorry.

I will fill this with things on my mind. Random stuff mainly. A bit of a diary. Some useful stuff I trip over. Some of the years of bile and resentment I've got stored up (ok maybe not this stuff so much).

Whats happening at the moment?

1) My baby boy, Connor, will be born on 31 July 2002. :-)
2) I will be made redundant on 28 June 2002. :-(
3) I started a new business on 1 April 2002.
4) I'm building a website for that business at www.aardvark.dj
5) I'm trying to find myself another job.

aardvark.dj

the archives of my old site. No longer regularly maintained.

Saturday, June 22, 2002

Friday, June 21, 2002

Thursday, June 20, 2002

Wednesday, June 19, 2002

Tuesday, June 18, 2002

Monday, June 17, 2002

that's a nice rock!

me:

reach me

my other sites

recommended

caveat

worth repeating?

habitual haunts

regular reads

archives