Author: davebushe

I’m still in the whole not reading thing. I know I only mentioned it a few days ago, but it feels like so much longer. I need a book that I’m excited about in order to get back into it. I was wandering around Waterstones this afternoon looking for something to jump out but I got nothing. It’s almost a shame I got a preview of the new Richard Morgan a few weeks ago otherwise that would have so done the trick. It’s annoying, it makes my journies longer or at least seem long. There is one slight advantage, I concentrate on the music. The lyrics become more important, it’s not just background, it’s all there is.

Alex and I went to see The Machinst this evening and unfortunatly it was pretty shit. The writer had obviously seen Fight Club and Momento and just played off them, badly. Christian Bale wasn’t bad, in places he was really good but he was working with a really poor script. Best thing about it was the trailers before hand. I am so excited about Batman and perhaps even more so Sin City Cannot wait.

On a comic related subject, I’ll be having me some of this Absolute Watchmen.

I see it’s confirmed that Yahoo have bought Flickr and indeed parent corp Ludicorp. I’m sorry to see it’s not Google or indeed us but hopefully it’ll loosen up some of the restrictions around limits and that.

…when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

We had a problem on the service yesterday. It was first reported on Thursday night and by 1pm on Friday there were a whole lot of people looking at it. Including me. I still don’t know how I got dragged into it but I did. It didn’t sound too strange when I first heard about it. There were 4 or 5 possible plausable reasons for it. But as the day went on, every one of those reasons was knocked out of contention. There was the strangest fucking reports on it. Everytime I came up with a reason for it, something would come in to prove that was not the case. Roll around the end of the day, and we have gotten no-where with it and I mean no-where. So a few of us carry on and spend the next 3 fucking hours and on a Friday night bashing our heads off the wall, brainstorming, looking at code (we are talking sheets of paper and highlighters here), all to no avail. Sure we found a couple of minor things which we’ll address on Monday but not a single reason for what was going on. Around 9pm, we gave up on orders from management to go home. The problem seemed to be dropping off and indeed I’ve just checked my mail and it’s quiet today but I still don’t have a fucking clue what caused it. I don’t even have anything improbable to go on. One thing it did really flag is that we need some serious work on our escalation policies. The three of us who were there working on it, well we weren’t the ones that should have been doing that and yet somehow we got dragged into it. That’s another one for Monday morning.

It bugs me and it’s going to bug me until I find out what it was, I really hate when I get involved in trying to solve a problem like that and not either being able to solve it, or find out what it actaully was. So yeah, it’s going to bug me.

On a similar line of work related thought. Brand is a huge word. I’ve only really picked up on that in the past year or so. It’s interesting to have to think about the brand from the behind the scenes point of view. I am generally not too pushed about brands. Apple probably being the biggest exception. I can’t think of a higher quality tech brand, nevermind more inovative. Lots of people mention Nokia in the same breath and it may well just be my lack of interest in mobiles, but I don’t see it. They make decent phones but that’s really it. There isn’t a huge amount of inovation product or brand wise. I thought I had alot more on this but I don’t seem to.

Music, segue. I fucking love it. I love it when a piece of music just moves into the next one *perfectly*. Mars Volta was a good example of this last week. They just got on stage and played straight without a break between tracks or a single word for about 40 minutes. The songs (noise in some cases) just shifted together. They started, they played and the music changed from one into another and I fucking love it. Planxty from the Live 2004 cd are the ones which have really had me thinking about this. Track 12 starts off as The Raggle Taggle Gypsy and that plays on, then the finale on it shifts from being a finale to a build up and it’s Tabhair Dom do Lámh. I love it, it’s one of those perfect moments in music. There isn’t anything else but that transition, that segue. The skill it must take to be able to play and then to be able to play at such a level to go from one to another, it’s astounding. It’s just pure magic.

Luke, a friend from work was playing a DJ set a club off Oxford street last night and a few of us had promised to go along and support him. I had planned on going home and having some dinner and getting changed and then heading there but the work stuff changed all that. So I got there around 9 and we kept going until 3. He’s a House DJ and House is so not my style of music. It was, to be honest, not as bad as I was expecting and there were a couple of decent tunes. Luckily enough I was not alone in dissing the music so a couple of us just sat back with some drinks and chatted. I was really impressed by how good a DJ he was tho. It may have helped that the two warm ups were not brillant but Luke really got the crowd going. It was very easy to see that he was into it and pass that along. So it was all in all a good night. Which made two for two.

Thursday night was messy to say the least. Latymers in Hammersmith was the venue for St. Patrick’s Day celebrations. Lots and lots of Guinness and home around 1am. The nice Irishman behind the bar was passing out free shots and some of them went down really well. He just arrived at the table with a tray of them and left it there. All a good idea at the time. The music was Irish all night, there was much (really bad) singing along to anything from The Dubliners to U2. A good night with good company. A whole lot of people in pain on Friday morning. Such a good night tho. Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves and there was an great turnout.

Tonight is a birthday party for one of the lads. It’s just down the road in Camden but I’m thinking I really need to just arrive later. It started at 3 but I don’t think I’d survive a third night on the trot. So I’ll head down there later on.

Still no fucking KOTOR 2 patch despite lots of reports that it’s done. I’d really like to get playing it again.

I have written a comic script. Well, more precisily, I have adapted something for a comic strip. It’s small, just 5 pages and I have an artist ready to start drawing. It should go up here in a few weeks, I hope. I think it could come out quite well, Rich has expressed an interest in trying to draw a strip for a while and I’ve been meaning to get a script together for a while. I just need to get some panel layout down on paper and pass the whole thing onto him. Something to do tomorrow afternoon I suspect.

I have come to a decision, I know it’s a little early but I’m going to have a mid-life crisis. It may sound stupid, well forget may, it does sound stupid but of late I have increasingly been thinking about age, specifically mine and indeed everyone else around me. I really need to make a serious effort to focus less on living for today and more on living for tomorrow. I do the former really well, I don’t really do the latter at all and I should. It’s really stupid and I think I know what brought all of this on bit it’s still been in my thoughts alot. In fact it was a pretty big discussion on Thursday night although after lots of pints it kinda meandered along a bit too much. So anyway, time is fleeting.

Fucking Blogger is really sucking these days. It takes sometimes 20 minutes to get it to post and then it does it 3 times. I’ve been using Moveable Type i work for some stuff and I really wish fucking Readyhosting would support it’s requirements so I could change over to that. I have to take the del.ico.us stuff off the side, I’m not using it enough.

So here’s a cool link relating right back to the first couple of paragraphs:13 things that do not make sense.
It goes without saying that number one should be women. I assume this is just an oversight and will be corrected shortly.

Party time.

Brand.
Married.
Age.
Outage.
Holmes Quote.
Past possibilities.
Friends.
Good nights.
Love.

I can’t type now, it’s way too fucking late. Tomorrow…maybe.

Last night. I wish I could say that it went downhill after the tray of shots arrived, but by then, well the singing had already started.

A good good night.

I had a demo scheduled from 12 – 1 today. It went really well but it overran quite a bit so I didn’t get to lunch until around 1.30. We decided to wander to Tescos and then sit in the park with a sandwich as it was a lovely do.

However it was agreed that it would be just rude to pass the pub with decent beer garden and not have a Guinness. I’m never one for being rude.

And now this evening. A whole lot of the people around here are turning out for what promises to be a long and messy yet fun evening of sculling Guinness.

May the road rise up etc etc etc. I’ll be in the pub. Tomorrow morning’s going to hurt and I just offered well more got enlisted to attend a two hour meeting on Safety and Security strategy over lunch time tomorrow. Must remember painkillers for the morning, and perhaps a new liver.

“People are defined by three things. Their heads- how they think. Their hearts- what they feel. Their dicks- who they fuck. At the end of the day, each of us has to answer one question. One, not so simple question. Who am I?”

Oz

I seem to have lost the will to read recently. I’ve a whole lot of books that are waiting to be read and I’ve tried to start 2 or 4 of them with no joy. I get a few pages in and I just don’t feel like doing anymore. For the past three days I’ve not taken a book to work. I’ve read Metro on the way to work in the mornings and just listened to some music on the way homes. It’s a phase I go through every now and again. I hope it doesn’t last very much longer. I usually like reading and it makes the journey each way easier.

Strangely, it does not affect comics at all. I’ve been re-reading some old Superman stuff, from Death of etc to the more recent No Limits reboot. Some of it is fun, some of it is not, it’s too bogged down in continuity.

Home tonight to finish off the third season of Oz and then to possibly sleep early. Tomorrow being a long day and all that, but I’m looking forward to it alot.

The sun is shining.

It’s been a while since it’s been like this. I went out for breakfast about 45 minutes ago and it took a second to realise something was different. As I crossed the road, I realised, the sun was shining and it wasn’t cold. In fact it was even close to warm. Spring may well really be upon us. Soon I’ll be able to spend lunch outside again.

I was going to go to Stonehenge this weekend for the spring equinox. One of the guys in work invited me a long and I thought it would be fun. There is full access to the stones and a whole lot of pagan rituals and fun and games like that. It happens to be overnight on Saturday too, so no problems about getting there and back or taking time off or anything like that. I’m still thinking about it but there is a birthday party on which promises to be fun and a couple of people who haven’t been around in a while travelling down.

Before then, tomorrow is St. Patricks day. Of course, there are drinks going on. I’m sure there will be many many many drinks. There are a whole lot of people coming out boozing from work and I’m looking forward to it. I’m not looking forward to Friday morning at all. But tomorrow with a whole lot of good friends is about the best and indeed the only way to celebrate seen as I’m not in Ireland for it…again. Anyway the email has been sent, the troops are preparing to gather and the discussion over St. Patrick being a Welshman has led to much heckling over the coming Six Nations showdown this weekend. This then led to much heckling of Episode III. I don’t quite see the connection myself but the thought stream around here can move pretty damn quickly.

Listening to The Bravery’s selftitled debut this morning. I mentioned that I saw them before, a few months ago late one night in Barfly. They weren’t bad, happy to buy the album on the basis of that, but there really isn’t anything here to live up to the hype they are getting. It’s a decent album and well worth a tenner, but that’s really about it.

I meant to note that I found it strange to hear Peter Gabriel’s Solisbury Hill twice on Sunday. Once as in between act music at the festival and then played by the DJ as I walked into The Dogstar in Brixton. Strange, it’s not a song that I expect to hear much. The first time I was surprised the second even more so.

It is, of course, from the Vanilla Sky soundtrack. Great movie, great soundtrack.

Motivation is hard to create on your own. I don’t think I could be self employed or anything like that.

I just typed that out and then I deleted it and retyped it. Its not true, well its not always true. Sometimes motivation is damn easy to create on your own, maybe not create but certainly build up. There has to be some sort of a result to work towards even if its just personal satisfaction. The problem now is that is there isn’t anything to work towards and it’s impossible to create motivation. There has to actually be something to do for a set amount of time every day but right now there isn’t. There isn’t even something to last for a few hours.

I was thinking last night, that I would love to be able to come into the office and actually try and be happy and be productive here, it would do me the world of good but there just isn’t the opportunity. I have nothing to focus on to drive me. I’m not cut out to just pick up a book and learn without there being something to do with the knowledge and that’s what is killing me. I have so much time that I could use to learn something. I have the tools, I have the books, I have so many smart people around me who I can ask anything but unless I have a deliverable and some sort of a deadline, I just don’t have it in me.

I use to, and to a degree I resent this place for beating it out of me. It takes two to tango of course, I recognise that and I’m guilty but not to the same degree.

On the good news front, it only took one email to HR to remind them that I started working for the company back in Dublin in ’99 (so long ago, it’s scary) and that as such I qualify for the 5 year party next month. Apologies and an invite arrived within hours so that’s good. Looks like its getting a good amount of effort put into it. The new HR director seems to be a breath of fresh air.

That’s actually something there has been a lot of here in recent weeks and it’s helping me get through the day a lot. Something has to and I have a lot of memories of broken promises about how things will change but this time, for once the cynic in me isn’t as loud. I think this could really work.

If it doesn’t, well I don’t know what to do then. Anytime I think about leaving, I remember how easy I have it here. I’m very well paid and when I actually get to do my job I’m good at it. I work with good people and I do sometimes have a chance to learn and develop. It just needs follow through, that’s the big problem. I’ve been on some good courses, some useful to me and some that I managed to blag but none of them have helped in the long run because I don’t get to actually use and build on what I learn. It annoys me a whole lot. A few years ago I could learn for the sake of learning and I could do it myself, I don’t seem to be able to do that anymore.

I felt like writing, so I opened up this window. I didn’t think I had anything to write about, but there ya go.

Yesterday wasn’t so bad. Had a quick drink and a catchup after work and then headed home. Very happy to find the third season of Oz waiting for me and I watched the first 3 episodes of that. Its good stuff, looking forward to watching some more tonight. There was an interesting IM conversation covering a whole lot spread over a couple of these episodes too.

Wearing your heart on your sleeve is an interesting phrase. I like it.

Dara O Briain is a fairly famous (in Ireland anyway) Irish comedian. He was one of the announcer for the St. Pat’s festival on Sunday. I’m not a huge fan but he had to make a couple of jokes of course and what better topic than religion. There was one I like alot so I’m going to steal it and put it up here. He was talking about Catholic Ireland and how you just can’t get away from it. Everyone is born Catholic and you can’t just tear up a membership card or the like and leave it all behind. So the lines went.

Back in the Irish census last year, there was an option for all the atheists among you in the Religion category. “Ethnically Catholic” and it means I’m Irish, I don’t believe in god, but I still fucking hate Rangers.

It made me laugh and I doubt many of you will get it but it made me laugh a whole lot.

It did strike me off thinking about the whole religion thing again and how it was just like that forced upon me and indeed the rest of my family from a young age. I’ve touched on it before and it’s interesting how the little things that perhaps you don’t realise nevermind understand when you are a little kid make perfect sense when you are old enough to realise and ask the questions.

Actually that reminds me of a good example and a story which has nothing to do with that aspect and at the same time has everything to do with it.

I wrote about the IM conversation I had with my sister, Mairead, yesterday morning about her meeting an old classmate of mine in Tokyo. Well sometime later in the morning my dad rang for a chat before he headed off on business for a few days. I was telling him this story and I said I was surprised that the fella had recognised my sister. Having last seen her when she was 15, that would be 7 years ago. And my dad laughed at me and said you’ve changed a bit but your sister hasn’t. It’s the hair. Thinking about this it made perfect sense. Later that afternoon, I was talking to my mother over IM and she was telling me this same story. I expressed the same surprise to her that he had recognised Mairead and she said the exact same thing, the hair. It amused me slightly to hear my parents say the exact same thing un-prompted. Guess that’s one of the reasons they got together or something you learn over so long. And it’s just struck me, they’ve been married 30 years this year.

Fucking hell.