the archives of my old site. No longer regularly maintained.
Manchester United. As of tonight, I am the (proud?) owner of a football signed by the Man Utd team that won the European Cup in 1999 or something. Don't ask why. I'm not too sure how it happened. There was some kind of charity auction and I bid a fair amount of money. Its 3am and I'm knackered so maybe I'll tell you tomorrow.
Dancing with Google My merry dance with Google, or to be correct; Google's merry dance with me, continues. I have hits from Google searches. Occasionally when I read my own page there's a Google Page Rank showing on the Google Toolbar. But after just a few hours it disappears again. Just what is going on?
Busy Busy Busy. At the moment (2 mins to 12) I'm still in the middle of rebuilding the light screens for the front of the disco. I've changed them to reflect the new company name because I'm doing a charity do tomorrow and I want to make the most of any publicity opportunities. I've still got paper work to do and get the washing in off the line and wash up etc.... I know its nothing that most single Mum's don't have to do but still, I'm pooped.
I had loads of stuff I wanted to write about today as well. But it'll have to wait.
6 days till the baby arrives! Yey!
To De(lete) or not to De(lete); that is the question. For those of you who keep blogs, do you cringe when you look back over entries posted when you were feeling a little down? Do you read through them and think "I sound like such a whining drama queen?" because I know I do.
For a brief moment I toyed with the idea of deleting the entry but I felt that would be cheating somehow. This blog/journal is, I guess, a record of my thoughts and that was my thoughts at that time. However, having got over my maudlin introspective depression, I look back with a feeling of mild horror at the writings from last night. Oh Well.
Keeping the best china for guests. When I was a youngster my parents had two sets of dinner plates bowls and mugs. One was for general use and the other was kept for when we had guests. I never really understood this concept, why not just have one set that was reasonably good. Did my parents really think our guests (usually long standing family friends) thought any more of us because we had expensive plates?
On the same vein, Sharon's closest friend came up from London today to spend 3 or 4 hours. Despite her condition, which was really bad over night, she was up at 10am tidying the house from top to bottom. I felt somewhat guilty because I'd been tidying of and on since 9ish but was also looking after James. But I was also annoyed with her for risking exerting herself for no real reason. Sharon's friend knows our current situation and I don't think she would have felt any less of us if the floor wasn't polished and the side wasn't dusted. So we had a bit of a falling out.
More time than money. Again with the surfing for stuff to occupy that part of my brain that might otherwise mope. This week I have been mostly visiting.....
- The Bible in Lego - Some people have way to much time on their hands. But the result is an amusing twist on the old story. (For the record, I am an agnostic until such time as any Almighty Being proves his or her existence to me but have no particular desire to knock anyone else's belief system).
- explodingdog.com - hi my name is sam, i draw pictures, from your titles.
- Desktop Pole Dancers - If you have MS Media Player, Real Player or WinAmp you can download these third party visualisation plug-ins. My personal preference was the Valentine Dancer, but only because of the realistic modelling and movement capture. Link courtesy of Lisa at Pop-up Toaster.
- Netives Games - If i had more time, you can guarantee I would be wasting it here. Marbles, Speed Marbles and JRoids are my faves.
And then someone says hi. God I hate myself when
I wallow in self pity. After making the post I caught up on the blogs I read and my guestbook. Isn't it amazing how just a few kind messages can give you the kick up the ass you need to shake your mood.
Hootress left me a message on
my guestbook and
Jax left me a good luck message on her blog which I'd missed on Sunday. Cheers guys.
I might have to lose the
Bloghop thing though. With a
2/1/12 good/average/bad rating its not telling me anything that I want to hear particularly. It wont stop me blogging (I'm not feeling
that sensitive) but I see no reason to remind myself that some people find my ramblings uninteresting.
Good Day / Bad Day My interview Monday at the University went well. And the day was further improved when the Recruitment consultant phoned to say he'd arranged another interview with a Car Manufacturer for Tuesday. Tuesday started off badly when I heard that I'd not got the University job. Apparently it was a really close thing, but the other candidate had more relevant experience. It was salvaged partly when the interview with the Car Manufacturer went well. Fingers crossed hey?
Enetation commenting. I think my commenting system may be slowing the page loading down quite considerably. I hope this does not continue to be the case, especially as
Hootress installed it on her blog on my recommendation. I'd appreciate anybody's opinion on whether the page is loading slowly. especially if you read any other Blog*spot blogs that don't seem to be as slow.
Sometimes I struggle. I have a lot going on in my head at the moment and sometimes my coping strategies don't hold up. I have a wife who is quite ill at the moment and is due to give birth to our baby in 8 days. I am looking after her and our kids. I was made redundant 2 1/2 weeks ago and if I do not have a job of roughly equal pay by mid September we will run out of money at some point in October. My self confidence has hit rock bottom and there are times when I question whether I am even capable of doing the jobs that I am interviewing for. 6 years ago, when I was 24, my first wife died from a brain tumour at the age of 30 and I've never really dealt with it.
My main, subconscious way of coping is to distract myself with stuff that doesn't matter. When I should be concentrating on re-organising the finances, I'm surfing the net for something to occupy my mind. When I should be spending time looking for alternative employment opportunities, I'm watching crap on TV that I normally wouldn't give the time of day. When I should be talking to my wife, I'm here updating my blog.
Sometimes I suck.
Monday Mission 2.28 My first Monday Mission. For those of you who've never heard of it, take a look at
PromoGuy.net.
- 1. Have you ever sold anything through an online auction? What did you sell and did you make very much? Nope. Every auction I've ever seen discussed in the media has been marred by fraudulent bids which kinda destroys my confidence in them.
- 2. Have you ever bought anything through an online auction? How was your experience? Nope. Is Ebay paying you to run this little survey? Did you get much? Can I have some?
- 3. Do you like the sun? Getting a suntan? Have you ever had a bad sunburn? I'm afraid I'm one of the miserable ones. I have hay fever which makes summer uncomfortable and I go from pale white to bright red in under 5 minutes without ever passing through brown. So yes, I've burnt loads of times.
- 4. Are you a vegetarian? Why? If not, have you ever considered it? Nope and no. Although my sister lived with me for 3 years and she was a veggie at the time so I ate vegetarian with her every night except when she was out. I will still order the veggie choice at restaurants if it looks better.
- 5. Suppose you are getting into your car after you've just made your purchase from a store you visit twice a week. You suddenly realize you had a .35ยข item in your hand and you forgot to pay for it. What would you do next? (what *would* you do, not what *should* you do) Question why a store in the UK was pricing stuff in Cents then throw it in the car and think no more of it. Lets face it, they've made more money than that out of me recently.
- 6. Sometimes it seems that there is just not enough time to do everything that must be done. Was there anything you wanted to accomplish this weekend that didn't get done? Don't get me started. Personally I wish I could have hunted down the bastards that stole my motorbike on Friday and string them up by their innards. And then there's the house, the job hunting, preparation for the baby arriving......... I said not to get me started.
- 7. What is your favorite game to play with a group and/or an individual? (board game, computer game, athletic, etc.) Risk. Or GTA3. Or doctors and nurses (although that one's been a while).
- BONUS: One headline why believe it ? Because they never lie. Why would they?
I've can't hear you. So the commenting system lasted less than 24 hours on my page before the enetation guys disappeared. The comments are gone and their website isn't working. Hopefully its just temporary.
Wish me luck. Got my second interview at the University tomorrow for the VAT Manager job. So I'm off to bed. 11.30pm - Early night for me on recent form. G'night.
Search me! As you may know, I've been having problems getting my
business website listed on
Google despite trying for over 3 months. So I was a trifle amazed yesterday when my
Google Toolbar was showing a Google Page Rank of 4/10 (not a bad ranking) for this site and my tracking program showed referrals from Google searches.
And then, just 2 hours later my Page Ranking disappeared and I could not get this site to show up on any Google searches. Strange, I thought and a little disappointing. So this morning (rather this afternoon when I got up) I was pleased to see the Page Ranking was back and applied across all of the archives. I even did a couple of searches which I knew would return this site. Lo and behold it was there. I've finally made it I thought.
Nope! Once again, this evening I have no Page Ranking and the site does not show up on any of the searches. Even the ones which had resulted in the hits I'd noticed earlier.
So what's the gen? Does Google hate me or what?
Beaming. I didn't start this blog with a view to getting hundreds of readers everyday. I didn't really have a clear idea of what I wanted when I started it. However, as I was coming up to a period in my life that I knew was going to be tough (redundancy, new son etc.) and turned out to be even tougher (wife is ill, 2 break ins), it felt kind of cathartic to be getting it all in writing.
So yesterday it was a pleasant surprise when
Jax over at
Jax in the Box commented on this blog. I quote:
Anyways...in my search, I found a really interesting one, check it out: aardvarkdj.blogspot.com. This guy has been the most "real" person I have come across on the net...not to mention one of the only blogs I actually spent more then 1 minute on. Thank you Jax.
that's a nice rock!
me:
sex:male
age:30
status:married
children:3
Listening:
Barry Diston:Unreleased Stuff
Reading:
Weblogs
Terry Pratchett
Maps
Watching:
Bugger all at the mo, to be honest
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