OOHSOMETIMES.com has been updated with various bits as well as a new page detailing what I want to do to the site as well as other ventures. Please take some time to read it, get bored and wander off.

Well after the two website posts, what possible greatness can the Lord of Leisure bestow upon the lesser mortals he sees all around him? Well for a start he could actually get off his high horse and meet the people of this fair internet trash-laden land of ours and wonder about something. Or he could just finish off the last crumpet from this morning’s breakfast while watching several shows from America that started again this week that he is a fan of, thus truly living up to his namesake of being leisurely.

Yes good people, this weekend began just like every other weekend before, I woke up late from playing games late into the night once again, well after the week of boring myself on learning for the exam, I decided to play online with a group of Norwegians, slandering each other, having great fun in the process and it felt like I was down the pub with these.

Except i wasn’t. I was being a geek on a computer on a Friday night talking with people elsewhere, and frankly this does beg the question this morning as once again I find myself in front of the big screen, am I addicted? I spend every day in front of this thing at some point, I work with them every day, I know a lot about them. And instead of going out recently, I have been spending time here typing away on various things, watching films, and playing games. I do wonder what has prompted this recent change.

After all, as you all know I pride myself on being out and about. Though even then, this blog had become stale with the same things happening for a time. But I started noticing things I took for granted and it made me feel a lot better, that others have it far worse in this bad world of ours. And at the beginning of September I was doing quite a lot.

I had been to Alton Towers, Birmingham several times, seen many many good people, and this week, I don’t know really, I have been keeping myself to myself, staying in a lot. Granted i shall tell the truth now, one reason is due to lack of funds. Seriously I am wondering if a second job will be the best answer for what I want to do. Then course I know it won’t be because then what will I have, all work and no play makes Paul more normal. And there is no way in hell I am becoming normal!

Another is, well i feel a bit like hiding. Silly I know, but in times of when I know something else is wrong, I tend to hide. Self-Defence mechanism I guess from many many years ago and I ended up doing the exact same thing. School was a bust so I hid then.

College was better, and work came in and brought me out more. But it was the social life that was full of woe, and of course it led to the point where I went to work and then stayed in all the time. Hiding though never solves anything of course, we have to face such things that trouble us. It’s what some people would say that would define us as adults or children.

Problem is, I always prided myself on being a big kid. Hell being how old I am now is a lot more fun than being 15 in school. I can do so much more than back then, and yet it stays with you. And it dictates a lot of your actions for quite some time later in your life.

I do have some things to take care of, plans afoot that sort of thing and also to see someone I have been avoiding simply because of my appearence. Hell, it’s why the gym started again with such vaa vaa voom. All because of vanity. Weird eh? Or in fact I could have been writing all this just as a sob story in order to get some sympathy!

Did it work?

But hey, some of you may be wondering what happened to the blog posts of olde times where the walls were rubbery and safe. When we all danced in our underpants and thought happy happy thoughts while picking various noses. Well that is still a big part of here.

I still like to write about what I have been doing, certain things have been getting on my lordly nerves, laughing at people, I love doing that part. But I was thinking, I am trying to expand the range of stuff here, and every once in a while I also write posts which allow people to see what kind of person I am. Well here’s a flash. I’m just as f**ked up as the rest of you. Just I tend to handle it differently. Via the gift of being a numpty. And sometimes that’s the best thing in the world to be.

No it’s not a reference to the TV show with that woman Melissa Joan Hart before she turned into something that dropped out of the sphinx’s nose.

I say that because in the last picture I saw of her, she looked to drugged up to fight with the air around her (She met Pete Dohecty in a bar it seems) so if this is entirely wrong of me to say, you have my email address above please let me know if this is no longer the case, as she was indeed attractive once and it would be nice to know that she is doing fine again.

No, in the second of Today’s internet finds, I refer you all to an online cartoon that I used to read a long long time ago when I had an Amiga 1200 a number of years ago, now I could go all geeky and go now that was a computer, hell in some ways, AmigaOS is better than the Vista crap we are all going to be stuck with today. but alas good campers, this post is not to discuss this.

The online cartoon was called Sabrina Online, and was a cartoon done based around the life of a woman cat person named Sabrina who works at a porn firm (at least later in the series) doing computer stuff, being in love with Transformers and other strange and funny stuff.

just give it a look here: http://www.sabrina-online.com/ and see what you think. And Melissa, if you read this, let me know that you are ok

DayWatch

Now for those of you who maybe wondering what this is, it is a sequel to the film NightWatch, a Russian film in the same vain of Blade and Underworld, with bits of the Matrix thrown in. Now I didn’t even know NightWatch existed until a certain someone from another country who I am currently involved with, told me all about and I wasn’t convinced at the time that it would be any good.

You see this type of film normally has hailed from the stupidly high budget film studios of America and therefore the way it was sold to me I was expecting it to be rubbish.

But she saw the DVD for the first film (which featured both original Russian and dubbed English versions, it’s quite cheap really) and she bounded for joy like someone bounding for joy. Sorry it’s early on Saturday Morning, and well frankly my gift for creative language has been left in the dirty trousers from yesterday. Maybe I should put them back on, and get the creative juices flowing again eh?

Now having achieved the feat of making some of you throw up and the thought of me half naked putting trousers back on, I will continue. I watched the film, and believe it or not, it’s not that bad. Seriously.

It surprised me a great deal, though be warned the story does take a far bit to follow and what is happening on screen may confuse you a bit, but if you do pay attention, you are rewarded with the ending which shows something you wouldn’t expect, and no that’s not a gorilla eating a plate of beans while dancing with Michael Jackson on a unicycle.

Granted that would have been a good ending but still, I am quite eager to see DayWatch, so go on t’internet, read up about it, and you maybe surprised at what you see.

This week, after surfing the internet and doing random things the you simply do when you have lots on your plate to do, the housework, learning for exams, not writing the podcast, going to gym etc and you really don’t want to do them, I stumbled onto this news story :

Nintendo fires Worker for Blogging

It was a rather interesting tale of how someone who worked for a major corporation contracting as a recruiter lost her job after the bosses at Nintendo found her personal blog, which she described that a bonus of working with someone there gave her a great excuse to drink heavily.

It appears that blogging was not banned but it was not encouraged. The writing of the woman in question was not work appropriate. And this story got me thinking.

I have been writing this blog over a year now and in that time I have been writing while in the employ of two big I.T. outsourcing players. The type of things written on this portal to the inner Hughes have been one of where relationships have gone wrong, where I have cried foul at people and situations. Where I meander in and out through the thread of my existence on the planet Earth and basically write here as a method of expression and in all honesty now, a way of extending my writing skills so in perhaps in future I maybe able to pursue this.

After all, who would pass up the chance to write about this life we all find ourselves in, about the little things which we all take for granted. Though I suppose if you are paid by the word you are going to have to be pretty damned talented to stretch out a story about picking your nose.

For instance you would have to be able to describe the whole contents of the said nose, for all of us there are unknown dangers and hair. The danger is that the green menace will rear it’s ugly juicy head whenever you sneeze and it so happens to be in front of your friends and they never let you forget it either. Or it could be the really bad ones that get stuck on your hairs and then at some point you just have to go in there, like on the beaches of Normandy and rid yourself of the snotty Reich. Just without the help of Tom Hanks.

But I am getting off the point again! Wow, I never do that do I? Oooh, some cheese……

(5 minutes later)

The whole point of this post is to wonder what would happen if the bigwigs at the firm where I work now were to come on here, take a look at what I had been writing all this time and decided it would bring the company into disrepute.

Would I lose the job I worked hard on over things which occurred outside the work premises? It would then mean that I anything that I say or do would be subject to the work’s practises. I know of course, if I were to get arrested then my employment would look in bad shape, of course it would. But things which are said in the public realm outside of work surely would come under free speech.

Remember what I said about Norwich Union a little while ago, and I had the response from one of the “Blog Change Agents” to try and sort it all out. If they were really wanting to destroy the bad publicity, they could have sued for slander, granted the facts of what has happened so far would have saved me because of the length of time it has taken for the whole car business to be settled, but not without costing me a fortune and therefore more than likely succeeding in taking down this web site.

If companies like Norwich Union have people employed as “Blog Change Agents” you makes you wonder as to the power of such sites. Are we getting to the point where people blogs have the ability to bring down companies? Well being honest no.

The definition of a blog is for lack of a better description, an online diary, kept by all sorts of people in all walks just talking about whatever they want. But not everyone is famous from writing a blog, over taking the various “jor-narly-lists” and “bigwigs” we have these days. Have you ever bumped into someone who wrote a blog and therefore could walk into a very expensive restaurant and have a table ready for him/her in seconds because of that?

If you have you are a effing lier! so NUH!

And back to the blog issue, here we would have to determine the line where the freedom of speech stops and company policy starts. This would not only be on this blog but on most written material out there.

And because I am one of the little people and not seen as powerful and able to wield that power on the public to sway them against anyone, they can quite easily put a stop to anything if they want to. What the woman did in this case was bad-mouth her co-workers but the problem I have is that people do that all the time, but they do it sneakily behind others and I would think that blogs are an extension of the “WaterCooler” moments we all have these days.

If I were working in America, frankly I don’t think I would be able to write this. I would only write about fluffy kittens and balls of yarn (oh what fun they are ) and therefore wouldn’t annoy anyone.

But I don’t. I live in the UK, a place where it seems for the moment, I am allowed to write what I like and therefore can really get things off my chest. Because if I didn’t have this, you would wonder how else the annoyance would manifest itself?

I wouldn’t be so motivated to write half as much and this little thing has brought out the creative troll that lives under my bridge, he nicked the keyboard, first tried to play solitaire just using his elbows and then started making words appear on this big screen thing I’m sat in front of.

Of course the other side of the fence is:

Is it acceptable? Remember just because things are written in cyberspace doesn’t mean they won’t effect anyone. It’s like saying in front of your sister, to someone near you “My sister, she likes like a cross between Sloth from the Goonies and some afterbirth.” It’s just not cricket, you see. Granted it can be funny but as always you will find someone that is hurt by your remarks. I know from past experience that it can be the case and I have hurt people on the way while writing these very pages.

Though I must point out on the record that for one person I did it for a cheap laugh and it worked, so no regrets there! Just as in real life you should say things in an appropriate time and place, so too the same rules apply out here, because at the other side of the screen is another human (or gorilla) reading what you have written and passing judgement on that. You never know, someone in the workplace may just want to have a word with you. Beware good people, your words are seen by more than you know.

Cool ain’t it?

Well technically that is MCP again, but yes dear campers it is official! I am certified in (and it’s a big title):Implementing, Managing and Maintaining a Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Network Infrastructure. I actually did pass one of the harder exams available and this is a sure fire way of not doing some of the work on the degree!!

Except they need something from my employer to say what I do and where it fits on the objectives. Either that or I become Cisco Certified. When will it end?!?!

The score I got was 840, the pass mark was 700 so a wee bit to spare there, and well I can’t tell you about it. You see every exam you do, you sign up for a Non-Disclosure Agreement which means that you see the exam questions but you can’t tell anyone what they are or what format they are in.

The problem is the first thing people ask you after “Have you passed then?” and “Where are the cakes?” is what is it like? And frankly I don’t believe anyone stays silent saying, oh I signed a NDA I can’t tell you. They would just look at you funny or worse still, beat the crap outta ye until you yielded the required information!

So as it stands If I took the 70-290 Windows 2003 Server exam and one elective exam on another technology, then I would be classed as a MCSA. Which would be nice, but not sure if I would or not. You see, I had the benefit of a training course where I was able to look at the sort of stuff in detail and even then the training course didn’t cover everything on the exam.

You really do need past experience on how this all works before stepping in that exam room with the lovely camera so they can see if you are cheating or not.

This does give rise to performing a few things for the camera, like waving, writing on the plastic thing they give you to write saying something is broke, and they can also see you jump in the air go wooo and then looking like I was about to go to the toilet in one fell swoop. Not that I did that of course today……

Over the coming weeks there will be different sections added to the website containing extra areas which should be different enough to grab your attention while finally adding functionality that I have wanted for a long time.

The Podcast has once again been re-written, I just cannot for love nor money get it right about what happened at V, hence the rather sizable delay to it’s release here on the website.

And for the final part of the post here, I will not be updating the website until Thursday of this week due to exam prepartations. I have a fair amount riding on this you see and it is best to try and squeeze hopefully enough revision to pass the silly questions that Microsoft set.

Till Thursday campers, don’t have nightmares, unless you really want them and in that case, please enjoy your nightmares! See I’m covered on all fronts…

By request of one Mr. Paul Comaish, he wanted me to write about the use of drugs in Cycling from the 1950’s to the present day and how it has changed in terms of what happens if you are caught.

Well, this was an excuse he told me to talk to me and shoe horn in a wonderful story about one man who died from a combination of Coca-Cola, Whiskey and Amphetamines.

Well it’s just not the done thing these days as everyone takes the cycling seriously and as a result would only be interested in drugs which they cannot test for yet. Honestly. Not like back in the good ol’ days when there was no money in the sport and therefore people didn’t care how much calpol you had the seconds before the race.

And you could drink and ride at the same time. Some would say that is an improvement over what you can do now, but alas poor campers, it is not good if you can not even stand up straight let alone cock one leg over the bike to go somewhere and steer in a reasonably straight line.

Drugs bad, cycling good. Here endeth the lesson, and remember kids, stay in school.

Granted this sorted of (insert suitable swear word here) is not up to my sort of usual standards, some of you are still reading this which means I am not writing enough drivel to drive you away just yet.

I could start again instantly about the weekend’s happenings (despite my update on Sunday), how family tends to annoy and you can’t find a decent car parking space in Barkshire. I don’t why Barkshire, it’s just sounds good. But it was during the conversation with the Comaish, that he asked do I take requests?

Requests to write blog posts about a particular subject that the reader may be concerned about. Well they would be, I couldn’t give a elbow about it and would in some way find something to utterly destroy the subject at hand.

So I will open up the forum here. What do you, the discerning readers want to read about, or even hear about courtesy of the “Often late and quite surprising when it turns up” podcast? (that’s the new working title btw!) By all means, please add comments here or email me and I will be more than happy to laugh at your expense and destroy all reasonable arguments with silly words such as chair and mongoose.

The problem with everything is everything has a problem with it in the first place.

Quite a profound sentence there isn’t it? This could lead onto some discovery about the shape of things to come for human society and the ultimate truth of no matter what people do to create working products, they will flawed due to the flawed nature of all living beings.

We could also remark on the futility of existence in the fact that we will follow the same program, we are born, we mate with the others, have kids, we die and decompose into nothing, they go on having kids etc and that is the whole point of life. Life is designed so that everything was created for the purpose of impressing the opposite sex into bed therefore keeping the cycle going.

But the blog isn’t that type of thing!

LOL!! I’m sorry but I couldn’t help myself. It was just something you expect from educated (or those who read something off the internet) people over dinner parties where it gets to the point of the evening where a bit too much wine has had and this kind of drivel is spilled out all over the place just like the gravy served with the rice pudding. Everyone agrees and goes home and think what a load of b******ks.

This place is meant to be light hearted, a refuge from the harsh world we live in, where we forget the things which matter and read about all the rubbish of what I do, and people can come away safe in the knowledge that their life is better. Well I am paid by the government to do this, it’s part of feeling that Britain isn’t that bad.

And on that bombshell It’s time to start the lesson!

I achieved something which most people can only dream of today. It was the peak of human achievement and my legacy shall be passed on through the ages. I went to the gym.

Stop laughing.

You see I had joined the great number of people who have a gym membership but the last time they used it was 1987 at the time there was no real internet. This was always a thing to say to people, that you went to the gym, and say look I have a membership card and everything.

Though it always looks like the person saying it is one pork pie away from needing help from Noel Edmunds at Christmas to be airlifted to Hospital. But after a disturbing view of my stomach, aided by watching Run, Fatboy, Run! I decided to actually use it. And it only confirmed what I already knew. I have the heart of a 90-year old and it’s been given the last rights.

And I know it will only get worse, because as we all know when we get older, our body gives up and says you’re fat, deal with it. And actually that does mean this gives rise to the entire fighting fat empire where we are promised the earth and a body which could even win over Jessica Biel or some attractive man (maybe even me! that’s for the ladies out there!) and we have plenty of self help books by Paul Mckenna to aid you lose weight, gain confidence and now he can even make you rich!

WOW! What sane person would actually buy this only be disappointed at the lack of results?

That’ll be me then!

We have weight supplements, guides, dieticians, books, magazines, CDs, DVDs, herbs, sports shops, experts, celebrities, food councils, slogans, promises, all relating to the ideal person you are meant to be. But surely it all comes down to will power, the fact that the end of the day it comes down to the type of person you are and whether or not you have the will to do something about it.

You can try all sorts, but in the end it is all about what you do. Now having said this award winning piece of advice of which surely I could win a luxury weekend in a spa from the Take-a-break magazine, when it comes down to it I generally am very lazy and would be more than happy sitting in front of the computer watching TV and playing games.

That would be my lot in life if I were left to my own devices and there was nothing else. But the problem is, there is something else. I want to be able to move about without issue into my late life. I want to actually think that some women out there could find me worthy of allowing into their inner sanctum. All this relates to my health and the sad fact is if I don’t do things about the general state of my health, it only gets worse for me.

There are things which would motivate me yet my nature of being the Lord of Leisure is at odds with this notion. Add to the fact that too much exercise for the frame of body different people have, can cause the very problems later in life you would face without exercising. Rock. Hard place.

Well hell, I will try and do something about it again. But with the track record so far of 5 days in the week that I start out doing the right thing then it all goes wrong and I end up eating lots of s**t feeling better for 30 seconds.

Now you could get into the whole arena of eating because I am depressed and therefore the whole comfort eating thing comes into play. I guess that’s true and it has become a habit. Maybe the best thing for me to do is to locked away in a health farm for 4 weeks and then I really have no choice. Mind you the best choice for me is just to be locked up. mmm, padded walls are my friend.

And not only that, after the Gym today, Dave came around from North Wales wanting to see my PC (no, for those at the back that is not a euphemism) he is getting a uber beast of a machine for all the good stuff like the gaming things that we geeks get addicted to. I introduced the thrill of the show Californication to him and he loved it, by the way, that show is coming to Channel 5 next month. Please please look out for it.

It was a refreshing change and being honest it’s good to have friends around the place. One day I hope to have a proper place where people can actually come around whenever and it wouldn’t be a problem. Then again I hope to own the Playboy Palace one day and well life makes a fool of us all!

That is all. Go forth good campers and enjoy the fruits of other people’s labour. BYE!!!!

Friday was today. You may have noticed this on the calender or file o fax or whatever people use these days. You have noticed my slightly different descriptive writing. Don’t worry it’s just an experiment to see if it captures people more than the normal drivel I write.

But alas like the certainty of a complete gimp winning the lottery and not someone who deserves it we will press on with what I have to offer this evening. The training finished today so I decided to celebrate this. With a trip to Selfridges.

Now I know what some of you will think now. Has he finally lost the financial plot all together that he was silly enough to even step into a store where you have to have a mortgage just to try a pair of trousers on.

Where all the brand names are of people you have never heard of but simply must have. Where they say this magic thing you must buy needs no introduction. But surely the fact that they have pointed out the magic thing means you have introduced it? Meh.

Well, campers I shall tell you why I went potty. I went to the sushi bar there because Selfridges have the sushi bar with a fully working conveyor belt. That’s right, like the Generation Game lots and lots of things are peddled along in front of you on a tiny belt where you simply pick them off and start eating. No Gary, put the cuddly toy back you can’t chew its ears off.

The way it works is you have have unlimited amounts of either water or Green tea (whatever is in that) for about a pound. Then you pick off little plates with different colours, no this isn’t becuase it was play school and we like different colours, the different colours are for how much each costs. Gray is a fiver so beware those little plates.

I had a few different types of raw fish along with some nice and greasy-not-very-good-for-my-heart-but-what-is-these-days noodles and I tell you what. It was very very refreshing.

Along with a couple of cups of green tea (which I was told my the very very very very friendly Italian host (Italian in a sushi bar?) was good for me) it went down quite well and the price despite meaning I have now lost out on the chance to own half of Cheshire, wasn’t overly bad. It just meant signing over the ford fiesta to them.

So after this kings banquet of tiny bowls I hastened home and tonight it appears we are entertaining the family again till Monday. You know Thursday was a great day. The weekend doesn’t seem to hold as much water…