Michael Jackson

well the big news is michael jackson is dead. i was watching the news last night when the story was breaking and it was a bit of a sad end for him....er...not that death is ever a good end...but you know what i mean.

it was quite funny when they started taking calls from people who claimed to know him asking for their thoughts on what happend. they had the DJ paul gambacinni, who is trawled out whenever some singer dies, to give his thoughts and he went on and on just talking shit, so much in fact, that when they asked him to recount a story about michael he said a friend of his met him once and said he was really tall. that was his story about michael. that he was tall and how sad it was that even this tall man could be struck down and pass away.

wow, great eulogy paul. i wonder if they will write that on his gravestone. thank the lord for paul gambacinni and his remarkable insight and knowlegde of music. i was trying to make sense of this tragedy, to understand it, and now its all ok because paul gambacinni has explained that michael jackson was tall. ha ha ha!!!. get off my television you idiot.

anyway i went to get my friday lunch of chicken and rice and the guy who works at the place where i get it, said he had tickets to see michael jackson play next month at the 02 arena, here in london town, and that he was sad michael had passed and that he was going to get a refund of his ticket. i nearly quipped, i heard that ticketmaster were telling anyone who wanted a refund to 'beat it', but i don't think that joke would have gone down too well with him.

thats it really. am flying the ship solo because the girl that works in our team has gone to the glastonbury festival and my boss has gone to see ac/dc today. i have nine inch nails and janes addiction in 2 weeks. thats miles better i am sure you would agree.

today i have mostly been listening to michael jackson - who is it. this is from the dangerous album which i think is very underated, and this is a great song and video and even more so, when you consider how tall he was.

have a lovely weekend flower.

glastonbury

i have no ability or aptitude to fill in mindless forms as part of some process. i must be in a minority because no one else seems to have trouble with it at work, but whenever someone starts talking about filling in a form to do with some task, my brain just switches off, even though i try really hard to keep listening.

explain something a little technical and eventually after 10 attempts i will understand it. talk to me a 1000 times about process and forms, and on the 1001st time it will still be all new to me and like i am hearing it for the first time. i think i might be starting to annoy the compliance and process team.

i need a day off i think. today have mainly been playing with creating images to deploy to servers using windows deployment services. its pretty good. saves you carrying lots of cds and is much faster. like i said before, it took me 10 attempts to get it right, but its pretty much there now.

one of the girls who works in my team is off to the glastonbury music festival. never understood the attraction of sharing a toilet with a hundred thousand people, and sleeping in mud for 3 days. don't think i would be able to enjoy the show if i was covered in mud and shit. once again, clearly am the odd one out because i know loads of people that go to glastonbury. the forecast is for rain on friday, so cue footage on the news of people rolling round in the mud saying that the mud is part of the fun and what glastonbury is all about. idiots.

anyways, its all on tv now, and the added bonus is that you can see it clearly on the screen and not have a million flags held up in front of you blocking your view of the stage. it must be so annoying when people do that. its bad enough going to a concert and some guy the size of shaquille o'neil stands in front of you, but another thing all together if he started waving a huge flag blocking the view of the entire stage.

i saw u2 at wembley stadium a few years back and promised myself i would never go to another stadium show again. everyone in the crowd was singing along with the song and it drowned out bono. whats that about?. i paid to here bono sing it, not some drunk idiots. also there were some people who got their girlfriends up on their shoulders and blocked the view of the people behind. the stewards were too far away to get to them and tell them to get down, but it was ok because everyone started throwing plastic bottles and cups whenever someone did get up on shoulders and the volley of missiles got them down pretty quick. it was all rather amusing.

i don't recall too much about the show. it was u2. for them it was just another stadium on a tour that would be paying for another new house somewhere in the world, and so they seemed to be not into the show or creating an atmosphere. they were probably thinking about whether the co-op of the apartment block would give them authorisation to buy that $10m duplex on central park west or where in monte carlo is a good spot to park a 150ft yacht.

today i have mostly been listening to radiohead - street spirit, glastonbury 2003. a year with no big flags and mud, so comepletely contradicting everyting i just said before.

this one is for you V.

stranded in london and phoenix

i had to work all day saturday so only had a one day weekend. i haven't worked a saturday in quite some time and it felt a little odd, though i can't complain because i get paid for it. the benefits of being a contractor. anyway i just constantly reminded myself that i was earning the equivavelent of just over half the cost of a return ticket to LA. it was like the equivalent of flying london to LA and then on the return getting to about phoenix. thats worth giving a saturday up for, although i wouldn't want to be stranded in pheonix.

i met up with some friends who still work at the internet company i spent years at, and everyone seems really fed up with things. resumes are being written and it looks like there will be people resigning as well as possibly more people might be getting fired. it looks grim over there. hopefully in a years time they will be able to look back and see it was good to make a change, and forget about the circumstances and difficulties they are going through in these times, though thats easy for me say from where i am.

weather is warm and sunny. i had forgotton what the sky looked like behind all those dark clouds. sat on the steps of a building around the corner and had my lunch watching the world go by. i usually eat at my desk but i can't be doing that on a sunny day like today. its almost rude not to go out in it.

thats it really. nothing else happening at all. no more exams lined up. have done everything i wanted to do and more. will do one new exam that comes out later in the year but its not out yet so i don't feel bad about not studying because i can't yet.

today i have mostly been listening to interpol - leif erikson.

keep smiling my friend.

its all true

so it's all true. the MD, idiot techboss and a couple of other senior managers were fired last friday from the company i used to work at. have had lots of emails from ex-colleagues whose lives were made a misery by idiot techboss, gloating and celebrating at the news of his misfortune. one of the guys even suggested going out for celebratory drinks to mark the occasion.

idiot tech boss was supposed to be speaking at seminar in a couple of weeks. there was a young graduate that idiot techboss treated badly and eventually fired a couple of years ago. anyways this guy has not forgotten how we was screwed over and after he calmed down from the euphoria of hearing idiot techboss was fired, he called up the organisation that is holding the seminar and pretended to be a delegate that was due to attend, and said that he had heard idiot techboss was fired from his job for gross misconduct and would he be be entitled to a refund of his ticket seeing as it looked like it was going to be cancelled. thats quite funny.

the moral of the story is don't screw people over and try and get on with everyone. you don't have to be their best friend. just treat them fairly and in an even handed way and be humble because you never know what might happen and one day you could find yourself in the shit. its a small world and you never know when you might run into the same people again. when i worked in banks i found that some of the people i worked with new some people from previous banks i had worked at.

some of my friends have also started to see peoples profiles being updated on linkedin and emails being sent out to former colleagues, fishing for opportunities. personally i have never been into the whole linkedin professional networking thing. maybe its just my experience but i know a few people on it, and those few are absolutely useless. is linkedin just a secret society for dumbass idiots to find employment for each other. not so much the blind leading the blind but the idiots employing idiots. maybe its me and i am just cynical.

anyways, i will be getting the lowdown on what went down tonight because i am meeting a couple of guys who still work at the internet company and one of them is a senior manager there. he will know exactly how it all went down. there is no gossip (that i am aware of) in my current job, so it will be good to hear all the murky details.

am on earlies this week which is 8 am starts. feeling a bit tired but i think i am actually preferring it. who would have thunk it, someone like me preferring an early morning start. that would have been unthinkable a couple of years ago, and besides i used to do 7am starts at one of the banks i worked at so 8am feels late in comparison. work has been busy the last couple of days and i have to work this saturday as well, but its fine. i really can't complain and thats saying something because i can be a whining fucker.

meeting up with a couple of friends tomorrow night as well. haven't seen them in a few months so will be good to catch up, though saying that, one of them just told me he will find out if he is getting fired, or not tomorrow and the other guy told me he has just seperated from his wife. christ almighty its all just doom and gloom out there. there was me getting pissed off about my bike get stolen. it looks like nothing in comparison to whats going on with these people.

today i have mostly been listening to jack penate - be the one. i always say stuff like this is the best song of the year so far or whatever, but this really is one of the best new songs this year. its wicked. i think i might even purchase a download of this song.

take care california girl

everyone gets found out

there are unconfirmed reports that idiot-techboss at the company i used to work at also got fired on friday. have texted a few people to try and get confirmation and will know for sure tomorrow.

its a sad thing when someone gets fired and it happened to me once early in my career, but can i just say i am glad idiot-techboss got fired, even though that sounds harsh. he was grossly overpaid, lazy, incompetent, fraudulent, and basically an asshole. i know a couple of really good and talented developers that worked under him in his team who resigned because they couldn't put up with him any longer and i know of a couple of other really good people that he got fired. he always blamed other people for things and always side stepped any responsibility, and he would always find scapgoats when something went wrong.

he would spend half his departments training budget on booking conferences in california or europe for himself and his pet developer, and he would ignore the needs of anyone else in his department. he whined constantly about wanting a new laptop or blackberry or iphone whilst the company was struggling financially and people were not being given pay rises. he would put his own personal expenses through as company expenses and he would skip out for 2 hours in the afternoon to go to the gym.

i catologued in some detail in my previous blog (here, here and here for expample), what it was like to work under an incompetent manager and how difficult it made life for me and i am sure there will be people breathing a huge sigh of relief on monday, if it is confirmed he has been fired.

to quote my favourite saying at times like this, everyone gets found out in the end. i would wish him well out there in the big wide world having to compete with everyone else out there, but i think he will need more than luck. lets hope he saved some of this 6 figure annual salary he got over the last few years.

ronaldo

sweet jesus of nazareth, these fridays are coming round fast. i have been here at this place now for 4 months which was as long as i was at my last investment bank. the 4 months there were so painful at the time, and now its all just a distant memory.

i went to get my usual lamb and rice, friday lunch just now and on my way back i saw ryan secrest who is the host of american idol. how random is that?. haven't seen a famous person in ages. the best one is still elle macpherson in the restaurant in new york.

anyways, the big news this week has been real madrid buying kaka and ronaldo. that is incredible. the other good thing about all this is man utd losing ronaldo. he is 24 and arguably the best player in the world and he won the european cup and the league title for man united, and without him they will be a weaker team. would love to see the smile wiped off their smug faces when they are drawing away to bolton in the league. there is no way he can be replaced. how do you replace the best player in the world?. how do you replace someone who scored 42 goals a couple of seasons ago?. they said he was not as good this season just gone but he was still man utds top scorer by a mile. you can't replace talent like that. you just can't. hopefully this is the start of a shift of power and arsenal can rise up once again.

what an awesome goal in the semi finals of the european cup. he doesn't celebrate but all his team mates make sure they come to congratulate him. they have to, because its goals like that, that paid for their ferraris and big houses. his team mates know they would be so much less successful and rich with out him. i suspect they will all be worried now. there is no one to bail them out with 40 yard missiles like that goal, any longer.

anyways, nothing major planned for this weekend. will just go to the gym as usual. i think i might cycle.....oh hang on!, i just remembered, some shithead stole my bike.

today i have mostly been listening to filter - take a picture.

UPDATE: the MD of the internet company i used to work for got fired today. i got on with him ok, but he could be a bit awkward at times and i never understood why he let idiot-techboss get away with all the shit he used to pull. anyways, they have installed a brand new MD who is from outside the company. maybe they will come in and assess everyone and everything and see that idiot-techboss is a lazy bullshitter who is sucking the company dry with his salary and perks and benefits, but not actually doing any work.

tube strike

tube (subway) workers are on strike again. its such a pain in the arse. they want a 5% pay rise this year. no one is getting pay rises recently let alone one that is nearly twice the rate of inflation. they really do need to get their heads out of their arses and get into the real world. 

a guy i know works for the tube and just works in the ticket office and he told me that he gets 52 days a year holiday. 52 days!!!. thats ridiculous. what planet are these people living on?.  i want to mee the guy who had the balls to ask for 52 days a year holiday in a previous negotiation with the employers and ended up getting it. his balls must have been made of brass and his name must have been fuckyou. 

anyways it took me nearly an hour and half to get home yesterday evening and its just not what you need. i felt tired and not in the most cheery of moods when i got in. was supposed to go to the gym but just couldn't get the energy up to go. the weather is dreary as well and i am still in mourning for my bike that got nicked. its supposed to be nice this saturday. what a fucker!. 

football is also cancelled this week what with one of the guys fracturing his ankle and another guy going to ireland for a couple of weeks. oh well. 

work is ok. nothing to say really. could be worse. i could be really having a bad time at work but i am not. though saying that i just asked one the people here to explain the process for something and they just started talking jibberish and nonsence. naom chomsky, celebrated professor of linguistics would have seen a lifetimes work undermined by that performance. do we have a language gene?. clearly not if that explanation was anything to go by. that wasn't language and words. that was just noise, that you were making pal. 

.....and thats all i have to say really. will try and get down to the gym tonight but that is dependent on my journey not resembling yesterday evening debacle. 

today i have mostly been listening to my new mp3 player. its very nice. 

my boss snuck out a bit early today to try and beat the traffic. understandable. my boss's boss just came back to his desk, saw he wasn't there and asked me what shift my boss was on this week. i think he was a little pissed that he snuck out early. it kind of put me on the spot because i didn't want to get anyone in trouble but then i can't lie either so i told him he was on the middle shift. he didn't look happy. oh well. 

take care now, you hear. 

cctv

there was a small chance that my bike had been removed by the security guards of the building, behind which i had locked it. i went round to the reception of that building today, and asked if they had taken it away for being illegally parked. they said they hadn't but then asked what time it was and the guy behind the desk showed me the cctv footage.

some guy just casually walks up to it. bends down and is fiddling with the lock for a about 15 seconds, and then just picks the bike up and walks away with it. he would have had to carry it because i had 2 other locks around the front and back wheels. he looked southern or eastern european, with dark hair, around 6 feet tall, wearing blue jeans, and a white/cream coloured jacket, and was carrying a black ruksack.

anyways, the lock that is round the rear wheel is small but tough to break and i can only hope that in his efforts to remove it, he accidently drops the angle grinder or electric saw he is attempting to cut the lock with, and it falls into groin area and it slices through his nuts. fingers crossed thats what happens.

anyways i will ring five-o and report the incident. they won't do anything but maybe they will look out for him in future if someone elses bike gets nicked.

i really am not sure if i will buy another bike. i did get to ride it for a year and half and when you consider how much people spend on running a car, then its still very good value, but its a bit upsetting having things stolen even if its not of huge value. i will think about it, but i doubt i will replace it. sad but true.

today i have mostly been listening to janes addiction - been caught stealing. dave navarro is the coolest rock star in the world. tattoos, ripped physique, eye liner, silly beard and awesome guitar solos. everything a proper rock star should be.

look after yourself vanessa.

my bike got stolen

it was cold cycling to the gym today. cold and windy. california time is 8 hours behind london. today you would think it was 8 hours and 6 months. it genuinely looks and feels like a winters day here in london, and yet we are in the month of june. how lame is this place?.

.....and then to top it all off....the cherry on top of the cake.....my bike got stolen from outside my gym. i have 3 locks on it and it is tied around a lamp post and some shithead must have had some industrial bolt cutters or something, because when i came out after my work out, my bike was gone.

to whoever stole it, can i just say i hope you fall under a bus ....and then a big truck....but you still survive, but then one of those little g-wiz electric cars runs over you and finishes you off.

so i ended up getting a train home from the gym. i live a 22 minute bike ride from my gym(if i had a bike). its about 4 miles and about 5 stops on the tube. i went to buy a single, one way ticket home and it was £4 (nearly $7). 5 stops on the subway, on a weekend at off-peak hours is £4. are you fucking serious!!!???. christ almighty, i thought to myself, i have already been robbed once today, and now i am getting robbed again!. to put it in perspective, when i am in new jersey, i buy an offpeak return ticket to new york and its $11. the train journey is 45 minutes and its around 20 miles each way. 11 bucks seems fair and thats a return ticket. nearly 7 bucks to go 5 stops on the subway. what a joke!.

i think i might watch taxi driver tonight. i don't like this city today. the forecast is for rain tomorrow. am hoping its a heavy rain that will wash all the filth and scum off the streets.

perpetual cloud

normal service resumed. the weather is terrible. dark grey clouds and it looks like it could start raining at any time. it looks like a november afternoon outside, not june. 

work is busy this week because my team leader is away on another course. this is the 3rd course in the last couple of months. i think i mentioned a while back that i thought he might leave. well i might be wrong because they seem to treat him well here and you wouldn't get this many courses out of another employer. he must know he is onto a good thing here. 

i still haven't booked my ticket for cali. i don't know why. i just haven't yet. i really should get it done soon. the thought of going on my own is a bit of a downer. have been to the states lots of times on my own, so i don't why i feel different this time. was thinking i might do a few days in new york before heading out to cali, and stay with my uncle. at least that way, i am not completely on my todd for the whole time i am out there. will see how it goes. jesus!, if the weather stays like this for much longer i will glady go solo and catch some sun in socal. i need a summer. if i don't go to the states it looks like i won't see the sun. summers are so shit here in england the last few years. we are under perpetual cloud cover for all but a few weeks of the year. 

these are strange days. feeling a little odd. i don't know what it is or why. am sensing from some of my friends that they are feeling restless/fed up/bored. hopefully something will come and break the monotony and lift us out of this feeling. 

the actor david carridine was found dead in his hotel room in bangkok yesterday. recently, he is most famous for being the bill character in the kill bill movies. anyways it seems he was found naked in the closet with a rope tied around his neck and around his genitals. reports were that it was suicide. i think they were being a bit kind and not actually saying what everyone thought, which was that it appears he died whilst jerking off, not unlike mr michael hutchence. 

quick tip for anyone here, if you are jerking off and you feel yourself dieing, and a bright white light starts to appear in the distance with jesus christ standing in it, then stop jerking off at that point. its not worth busting a nut if its going to cost you your life. seems like its stating the obvious, you would think, but its clearly not to some people. 

anyways, after that useful tip, i shall bid you farewell. have a lovely weekend. enjoy yourselves, but remember to stop what you are doing if you see jesus. 

today i have been mostly been listening to doves - kingdom of rust. 

summer for the last few days

well i used to bitch about my job but i can't do that anymore. it would be ungrateful, disingenous and petty to do so now, when things are actually ok. then i started bitching about the weather all the time, but you know what?...the weather has been fantastic for the last few days. perfect weather. 25C, nice breeze, clear blue skies and warm sunshine. cycled to the gym on the weekend and it was beautiful. also the gym was empty both days as well. i don't suppose people want to be indoors at the gym on sunny days. understandable. 

i went out on friday night in clerkenwell to see a couple of people from the internet company i used to work at. hadn't seen them in a couple of months and it was good to catch up. i miss the social aspect of work. i pretty much keep myself to myself at my current job. sad but true. 

during the evening i got talking to a new guy there who is a student at uni and is on a work placement for a few months and who is working in the tech team and his boss is idiot-techboss. without any prompting i asked him how it was going and how he liked working with techboss, to which he replied, techboss knows nothing and is useless. ha ha ha!!!. some peoples ineptitude is obvious to almost everyone (although not the MD). i said it before and i will say it again.....everyone gets found out in the end. 

i missed football last thursday and it seems one of the guys got injured. i saw a pic of his ankle that got sent round and it was swollen and purple with bruising. it looks quite bad. thank god i have never been badly injured ever. about 3 years ago a friend of mine was playing for his sunday team and snapped his ankle. he had to have a couple of operations and had a metal pin inserted in it. (UPDATE) turns out my friend fractured his ankle. he is out for a few weeks. ouch!!. 

the gods have smiled on me and with the exception of a couple of thigh strains and one time when i hurt my foot quite badly, i have avoided anything that would have kept me from playing for more than a couple of weeks. considering the fact that i have played football since i was 4 for various school teams, work teams, every summer with friends and now once a week, i think i have been very lucky.

anyways, i don't know if we are going to get to play football for the next few weeks. one of the guys is injured and another friend is going home to ireland for a couple of weeks. we may not get to play in this nice weather. 

work has been quiet today. just been getting on with some things. its the first day of the month so i had to do some of my accounts and timesheets, so glad it was a quiet day and i could get it all done, as opposed to doing it tonight when i get home. 

anyways, thats all folks. its june. it looks and feels like summer. lets hope it lasts for a while. 

take care V. 

today i have mostly been listening to TI feat Rihanna - live your life.