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Category: Life: Personal

Personal: Sweeet

June 23, 2003
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Oompha LumpaI’ve just been speaking to my GESF (and will be again shortly) about various things and the conversation got onto personalities and she said that I had a nice, kind, considerate, lovely personality and if I was there now that she’d give me a cuddle!

Ahhh, I responded “Stop it – my face is turning the same colour as an Oomph Lumpas” (and, yep, I could feel the blood rising in my cheeks). In usual Richy/GESF manner, the conversation then went off on a tangent and she asked if I had spent so long on a sunbed that I looked like David Dickinson [Order from Amazon.co.uk] , I then (deliberately – honestly!) put my foot in it by saying that Dale Winton was more my sort of man sweetie! (yep, I did a camp voice and everything). We had a good laugh.

(David Dickinson and Dale Winton are both UK TV personalities that are known for being a bit “orange” looking, Dale Winton has also recently came out and announced he is a homosexual although he does have a number of camp mannerisms which made it quite easy to guess anyway).

Anyway – gotta go do stuff now. Need to call GESF back, get Linux running on Zaphod (my old PC), crack the latest Google algorithm (it’s a strange one and a large number of people are reporting problems with it already), finish off coding a site, have dinner, finish reading Harry Potter And The Chamber of Secrets (I finished the Order Of The Phoenix yesterday) and a whole host of other things: but not necessarily in that order!

Personal: Oooh, all excited.

June 18, 2003
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Oooh, following up on a comment (well, two comments) that someone left on my blog I’ve got something slightly exciting (and potentially embarrassing for myself and someone) in the next few weeks. But I’ve “got to keep it under my hat” for at least a month – possibly until September.

I’m really looking forward to it as it’ll help me get something off my chest that I’ve been worrying about for around a year but been too afraid to do anything about it, but this will give me a chance to sort it all out one way or another (I think the saying is “trial by fire”). And it’s amazing how much “true gumph” I can come out with if people ask me about certain topics and the way it makes me feel (watching “Bruce Almighty” before responding to that person’s email made it even worse/better).

Anyway, whilst I know this is called “Richy’s Random Ramblings” (see, see – at the top it does say that!), I’m rambling a bit too much now even for my level of ramblingness. But enough said – more details will follow in the future I’m sure, but now we return you to your regularly random ramblings.

Pa-pa-pah-pahha-pa-pa-pah-paaaa! (Cue Pearl+Dean advertisements)

Personal: Where’s Richy?

June 11, 2003
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Where's Richy?Right, despite rumours to the contrary – I’m not dead yet (sorry Super Beastmaster), unless of course I was never alive and I’m just a figment of your imagination: but that’ll mean you’ve got a very deranged imagination… Oooh goody 😉

Anyway – I’ve been having some time off blogging not really out of choice, but due to time constraints: the servers at work have been playing up something rotten recently (here’s a word of advice: AVOID upgrading to Ensim Pro if you can: the several hours of overtime, weekend working and annoyance when the system crashes for “no apparent reason” is not fun), we’ve got a major redesign of our main search engine placement site about to “go live”, we’ve also got a “do it yourself online promotion” tool about to launch (with the associated fun in actually writing and debugging the bulk of it), I’ve also had a cat to care for, general house work, moving most of our customers to different datacentres (because of the Ensim Pro problems we’ve had to rush to bring 2 more datacentres online: and it was only a fortnight ago that a power transformer blew up at our main facility – luckily all generators and UPSes kicked in on time so customers never even noticed we were without utility power for nearly a week!), trying to burn DVDs (first ensure you have “DVD authoring” software available, then find out that the software shipping with your shiny new Dell PC doesn’t work so you have to buy a magazine with the software on the cover CD, then find out the DVD+Rs you brought, whilst compatible with the drive, just don’t work because of “power calibration” issues), and other little things….

Basically, as soon as I’ve got home (sometimes 3 hours after I was supposed to leave work), I’ve either worked from home to watch the servers or practically gone straight to bed! I’m still knackered (tired), hungry (most nights I’ve been too tired to eat: £80 worth of shopping has nearly lasted Smokey and I a whole month!) but I’ve got to change things: because I’ve been so stressed and busy at work I’ve made little mistakes which aren’t good (not checking a site in Google once it’s been re-optimised – even though Google had problems and had to roll back to an old backup), plus I’ve got my birthday coming up shortly.

Up – I’ll repeat that My 24th birthday is on June 15th: the same day as Father’s Day! I’ve got an Amazon.co.uk Wish List if you want to buy me a present. I’ve heard a rumour from my parents that I might be getting a dishwasher for my birthday (I tend to do washing up on the “I need a plate” basis: I’ve currently got 1 semi-clean plate and a washing up bowl full of dirty ones 🙁 ), going out for a meal and maybe a few other treats but we’ll see.

Anyway, that’s everything nearly summed up. Oh – there’s been a change of staff at work (BRCW has “left”, was replaced by someone else who didn’t work out and now we are getting someone else in, but could still be looking for a “Trainee Search Engine Optimiser” in the near future – especially if I keep making the mistakes I have been 🙁 ), I’ve been proposed to (well, call it an “arranged marriage” – if myself and GESF ‘s flatmate are still single when we are thirty we’re going to marry each other and GESF is going to be my mistress), and SSCW sort of asked me out this afternoon (in a kinda roundabout way: but I think we are both shy so it’s the only way for us) but I think it’s just going to be a “mates go to university and look at degree exhibits” type thing – and finally GESF is going to a singles night tomorrow night: but she’s not “going going”, she’s only helping out….

> And that, Doctor, sums up my life recently.
< Richy, I think we definitely need to get the men in white coats to see you!
> Nooo! Not the butchers!

Personal: Temporarily Deafness

May 10, 2003
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Ear EarI’ve gone temporarily deaf: in one ear I can only hear a fizzing noise and the other ear has been reduced to around 50% hearing. Why am I not more concerned? Because I’ve inflicted it on myself!

Yep, that’s right, I’ve made myself deaf. Before any of you point out what a stupid idea that is and that I shouldn’t listen to loud music, don’t worry – it hasn’t been caused by abuse of my hearing (I prefer things quiet anyway). Basically, I’ve noticed a gradual reduction in my hearing the last year or so and finally decided to do something about it: it’s happened once before (around 5 years ago), but then my hearing would fail to such a degree that every morning it would take around 2 hours before I was able to hear anything and I had to make an appointment with the Doctors to have my ears syringed (basically a strange machine is put into your ear canal and “fires” warm water into the ear for a few minutes and collects all the gunk that comes out). It’s quite lovely to walk into the Doctors partially deaf and walk out with better hearing that you’ve had for ages, but I just haven’t got the time to make an appointment at the Doctors as I’m very busy (yes I am, honest! 🙂 ).

So I decided to take the proactive method and went down to Boots (a large chemist chain here in the UK) and buy some ear wax remover solution (10ml for their “own brand” stuff: £4.65/$7.45) and I’ve just used it and twenty minutes later my left ear is still “bubbling”/fizzing away and there’s a movie I want to watch and record in 15 minutes .