Looks like it's that time again, in just over 24 hours I will be landing in Austin, Texas, where I will start a life as a true American, and will be starting by getting married to one!
It seems I have lost track of this blog yet again, this is not anything intentional, I have just been incredibly busy trying to make money online, and fortunately I have been succeeding!
This made me laugh oh so hard, the Muppets Bohemian Rhapsody!
Amsterdam was an amazing vacation, i have returned to a factory job to keep some kind of a cash flow coming in. To be honest I am enjoying factory work a hell of a lot more than my old office job, my value was instantly recognised, and I was offered a full time position with a view to training for further career opportunities. It is therefore unfortunate that I had to decline, since I hope to be leaving the country within the next 2-3 months.
In the meantime however enjoy the hilarious Muppets Bohemian Rhapsody!
I had to feel for the Irish as I got back from work and saw the numerous replays on TV. Their chance to enter in to the world cup dashed by the cheating French in extra time.
The Irish, ever the good sports, took this reasonably well, I would have been livid. they looked at it philosophically, I on the other hand wondered how the hell the referee and his attending staff failed to notice Henry pick the ball out of the air as it sailed wide of the goal, drop it to his feet and then kick it across for the goal.
How can we expect players to play fairly and honestly when there are no repercussions for vile cheating acts such as this.
My Norton 360 subscription ran out today, OK I though, I'll just renew it.
I clicked renew now, expecting to be done in five minutes, until I was given the bill.
£59.99
£59.99?
SIXTY FUCKING POUNDS and thats just for ONE YEAR!
If I pay £110 I get two years, nice enough to save me a tenner I suppose. But come on, this is not even for updates here, my software has stopped working!
Now I know businesses get shafted by these yearly renewal costs every year, and have done for a long time. But Norton has brought these yearly renewals to the public domain, and in doing so have just lost me, my family and as many friends as possible as customers.
If I buy software as a home user I expect to be left with that software, with security updates. If I want more features, a new PC tune up tool, or similar, then I will buy a new version.
For now however, Symantec can suck my rather large cock. I will be going to the numerous, less resource intensive, free antivirus and firewall options out there.
I do not know how Symantec can even try and sell their product for £60, especially when you consider the American version is, wait for it, $60, with a regular 50% discount, meaning overseas they are expected to pay around £15.
On top of these blatent rip off prices they do not even give you the latest version of the software, my renewal only giving me security updates, not product updates. For an extra £5 however they will allow me to use their latest software, as long as I keep paying them that additional £60.
So on top of us having to pay a value which takes the UK and US exchange rate as 1:1, we also fail to benefit from their discounts.
Goodbye Norton, Goodbye Symantec, Price gouging has pissed me off royally, so I am bidding thee farewell.
I hope your company burns to the ground.
Bring on the free software!
Amsterdam, the city of red lights, green lights, and waggamamma. Yes, I am there!
My fiancee and I have toured a fair amount of the city, from the small markets, to the red light district. The red light district is not as seedy as I expected, the window girls have their underwear on, I have not been mugged yet, but the smoking is FANTASTIC!
Anyhow, I will be returning shortly with a more indepth story of my times here!
My posts seem to have slipped from the daily, to the weekly and finally to the monthly. This is not intentional, but my life has slipped in to a slight ditch of monotony, with factory work, sleeping, and eating comprising the majority of my time. While I do try to stay on top of things it is not always easy, especially when I am trying to foster a writing career.
So I guess I should fill my few remaining readers in!
I have been accepted for the process on my new American visa, now I just have to prove that my relationship with Jade is real. Her website (http://www.myveganplanet.com) is doing really well right now, and she seems to be getting some good freelance catering work sorted.
Apart from the boredom, and spending 3 months away from the woman I love, things are pretty much ok, while my life may not directly be progressing anywhere, things are moving forward for my future life in America onwards.
Oh, and Manic, give me access to your blog!
If you want to see something pretty funny, check out http://thejagster.blogspot.com/ for the latest post, which shows a chav getting knocked to the floor by a man who he had been verbaly abusing and pushing for nearly three minutes. The chav who acted so hard gets knocked to the ground in one punch, and then crawls away, not quite so up for the fight as he had been moments before.
"Jesus Christ" I thought to myself this morning, when for the first time I found out that they were going to sell the post office. I mean if the government has not learnt from the mistakes of the Thatcher era sell offs, how it bankrupt our country and skyrocketted our taxes (Despite being meant to reduce them) then I really should despair.
While the American thing may not have gone to plan right off the bat things are still progressing and I will be heading out over that way soon enough.
Things have been pretty busy over here, I have been working hard to get a lot of sites back in to some semblance of order, with a little success on some fronts.
So after the drab nine months of British summer I was pleased to look outside and find a beautiful sunny day presiding over the city of York. This prompted me to put on my summer attire (Something similair to my winter attire but without a t-shirt) and sit outside.
Had a nightmare with American customs, will fill in the details shortly, for now however I am back in the UK, and will soon be looking in to getting my freelance writing on full time, wish me luck!
After 8 months of miserable weather it finally seems that Britain has once more reached that sunny plateau that is the British summer. The sun I shining, the air is warm and the landscape is beautiful. This two week period that is British Summer time is the rare period of time within which you can enjoy the United Kingdom amidst the ravages of the average British weather. It's this time of the year that heralds the start of the after work pint, sitting outside and absorbing the rays while they last. Of course in less than 2 months I will be in Texas, where the sun is infinitely more prevalent. However in Texas it lacks the soft cool breeze which keeps the body temperature down under the sunlight. That does not exist over there, I will burn, horribly. Of course what I really am looking forward to in Texas is the evenings, when the sun is close to setting, the air is warm and you can drink the night away till the early hours. This, to me at any rate, seems like heaven, I love that kind of atmosphere and really hope it is how I imagine over there. In more serious news, the government has responded to their lack of money by printing off £70 billion. This has pretty much completely f'ed over the UK economy even more with some completely idiotic short sightedness. I hate to say it but I am glad to be leaving this country while we have such a collection of incompetents in charge of our country!
I spent this entire weekend, up until now chilling. This has been just what I needed, relaxing with my girlfriend, sleeping the day away and eating to excess. The last couple of months have left me feeling a little stressed, my trip to America coupled with handing in my notice during a recession are just some of the things playing on my mind. I know it is gonna be a great thing bit the build up to it requires a lot of work!
The life I lead is about to come to an end, leading me to warmer climates, big city life and a girlfriend who is one of the sweetest things to happen to me.
Well, pretty soon it may be the final encore of this blog that has seen me through my years as an office worker, I am moving with my girlfriend to texas and will be persuing my career as a (Skint) freelance writer. This will involve me grovelling around the internet for freelance work while championing my own websites such as My Vegan Planet, Geekywood, Freelance Writing and I'm a Pundit.
These websites bring me in a little easch month, and by working harder on these and other websites I think I can make a passable income on my own, in a warmer climate, because lets face it everyone, England is going to shit.
With our incompetant government, increasingly grey weather and so many pussy ass whiney bitches complainging about their own self absorbed worries without seeing teh bigger picture (Animal rights etc - get a life)
So with that in mind I am going travelling, working for myself and will be waving goodbye to my job and country.
I will miss the security of the day job, but to be honest I want to do something where I don't wake up every morning to teh same old routine.
On that note, I will be shortly setting up a donate button, because lets face it, i'm gonna fucking need it!
The TV licence pays for a lot of the BT entertainment services, including BBC Radio, so could someone please tell me why the fuck 90% of the time the music played for anyone under the age of 6 is also played soley for people under the age of 16, who coincidentally pay sweet fuck all.
A quick shout out, blog out or write out, of one of the funniest blogs I have read in a fair long time.
Check out http://of-course.co.uk/blog/serendipity.php
Particularly This Post
I have some big news coming up soon, have to keep it under wraps for now though, you will however be seeing more regular updates and a big change in tone!
I apologise for the scarcity of posts on my blog in recent months, things have been a little busy with a new girlfriend and plenty of new projects to keep me busy, I promise to try and update more regularly in the coming year but untill then I hope you had a happy Christmas and a booze filled New Year!
Since I am so good at shamelessly plugging websites I though I would mention a new website I have set up called My Vegan Planet.
This site is as the name suggests a vegan website that provides an ever increasing number of healthy vegan recipes from different locations around the world.
Now I know I have slated vegetarians and vegans in the past, but now I am going out with one so if I did not agree with them I would get a slap so I am now more understanding to their reasoning. Besides, my girlfriend isn’t one of those namby pamby idiotic vegans, but rather one who does it for dietary reasons.
As it so happens my girlfriend is infact the author of this site, since she is a professional chef and has spent a lot of time working in raw food and vegan kitchens, giving her a great insight into vegan recipes and some fantastic tips for people new to the vegan world.
So take a look at My Vegan Planet now and Digg, Stumble, add to Technorati faves and advertise on your blogs please so I can become a successful millionaire off the backs of the greenies to help me start promoting the worthy vegan dietary cause!
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Just been looking for train tickets to London and came across this...
Can't help but laugh.
I was sad to learn today that one of my all time favorite writers Michael Crichton passed away today aged 66. The writer, famous for films as diverse as Jurassic Park and Andromeda strain succumbed to cancer last week.
My heartfelt condolences go out to the families and hope that some solice lays in the fact that his work will continue to entertain hundreds of thousands around the world for decades to come. A feat achieved by few other people, let alone authors.
His work always cast a skeptical yet raelistic glance against both Technology and fantacism, with a huge amount of abuse coming from gobal warming enthusiasts after he used his analytical brain to argue his case as he did with matters of technology.
It is a sad day for the fiction community and I can only but hope that a writer of such intelligence arises again during my lifetime.
*Thud*
We chuckle as another student slips over in the spilt beer.
*Crack*
We laugh as a young girl with poor high heel walking abilities goes flying before landing heavily.
"Booooo" we shout as the bar staff put a wet floor sign over the puddle.
It's the simple things in life.
Life has been busy over the last few weeks, the rock and roll lifestyle of the blogger is beyond bounds. Today however is the last day of a lazy Sunday, so I thought I would have another bash at writing a post.
I thought I would however make a quick statment about Russel Brand.
Russel Brand is a Twat.
I am not sure what it is thats so annoying about him, be it his complete lack of humour, annoying as fuck personality.
After redeeming himself slightly in the film Forgetting Sarah Marshall he recently pulled a prank phonecall on the old faulty towers star Manuel regarding his 23 year old daughter.
Now I am a man with pretty broad taste, but making llewd prank phone calls to a 78 year old man puts me in mind of someone who picks on the weak, infact it doesn't take much watching of Russel Brands shows to show that he regularly picks on the weak for the content of what can only be technically called humour.
Things have yet again became quiet aroud here as I took over 2 jobs for a couple of weeks, it left we a little knakered but fortunately i had the accidental foresight to book next week off, this should give me chance to catch up, get my affairs in order and start posting properly again.
I am working pretty hard to get my own business underway at the moment, curerntly bringing in a regular $350 a month. In the near future I am looking to expand that to around $4000, quit my job and relax a lot more :p
In the interim however I will keep my job on the go and focus on my work outside of the ol' office hours!
I have however been interested in the current governments throw money at everything approach.
Instead of say, reducing taxes and fuel duty, simplifying taxation rules to cut abck on red tape and allow businesses to grow again we instead seem to be throwing billions of pounds that has appeared from nowhere in a futile attempt to save the economy.
In my eyes though this not only simply stalls the problem but severely amplifies it, what happens when the £500 billion runs out, throw 1000 billion pounds at the economy instead?
The market needs to crash, everything has become too expensive, it will crah, normalise and grow again, its what the market does.
With our current idiotic financially incompetent ministers in charge though Australia is looking evermore attractive.
The new facebook has turned me off what was once a great networking tool, it put me in touch with a lot of old friends, it got me talking to some new people interested in similar music and it let me beat my friends at scrabble time and time again.
Now however there is 'new' facebook. As with many 'new' products it is an overcomplicated, messy and un-intuitive design. If 'old' facebook had been 'new' facebook you can guarentee it would not have taken off.
I would boycott faceebook if it was not for the fact that my entire bloody social calender, contacts and pictures are all now managed by that bloody website.
It has become apparent yet again that my body requires alcohol to function, I am on my fifth day alcohol free and I am tired. Very Tired.
If I was in a sleeping competition I'ld sleep in and miss it. I'm so tired I can't think of an original joke, infact I am so tired that a hot Finnish girl came to our house and though I really want to try it on with her I really can't be arsed.
I think mostly it is because I am still going to the puib, and being sober.
I sit there and talk, but only drink coke or water.
COKE OR WATER!!!
Bugger it anyway, at least it's helping my bank balance!
In other news I hired my first long term writer last night!
Business is looking up, wohooo, really want to turn my side job into a full time thing, would make my life so much better!
The world media has been in a frenzy over the upcoming presidential elections in the US. And with good reason. The person holding the presidency will be in charge of one of the worlds largest military and economic powers.
So why don't I give a shit who wins the US Elections 08?
Because, lets face it, it doesn't really change anything.
All the candidates are chosen for the show they put on, not for any real life experience, their policies tend to focus on publicised politics, not things that matter and they tend to get voted in on the number of points they score in rebuttals during debate.
The actual running of the country is done not by the people who sit in office but the people who have worked in politics for years, behind the scenes. Lets be honest, they are making a bit of a hash of it all.
And to the rest of the world it does not matter who is voted in, simply because America will always do whatever seems best to its undercover decision makers at the time, with no consideration for world politics or agendas.
The posts appearing on here are, I warn you, going to become more depressive, on Monday I am giving up the booze for a month or two!
So I just about survived my holidays with only the minorest of head injuries, sans wallet, phone and camera, and much much lighter in the bank account department.
I did however have a fantastic time, still love Barcelona (Where the mugging happened) have fallen head over heels for Munich, a city where drunken conversation the previous night was the target of a last minute holiday in mid September, only sobriety plus a heavy, heavy overdraft disuaded me from what would have otherwise been an amazing holiday!
In my absense though a lot of things have happened, most noteably our local has now allowed drinking outside, we have an incredibly hot bar girl working (Unfortunately only temporarily) there.
Also,
David Becham had his penis photoshoped on a 100 foot armani poster
The United Kingdom is doing surprisingly well in the Olympics, seriously annoying the Aussies who are a place and several medals behind us. Their polititions have now declared an olympic vendetta against the English, not exactly true to the aim of bringing nations closer together, but goddamn I love the Aussie attitude to life!
Britain has entered a recession, aparently, we all knew this anyway but now the government has decided its too obvious to blatently lie about it.
Gordon Brown is still a Cock. You heard me. Cock.
Big Brother is apparently on, some things have happened, I haven't watched any of it, and would sooner beat myself to death with a rabid lemming than switch it on.
Russian and American tensions are rising because Russia stepped into Georgia to prevent teh Mass genocide of its citizens.
America has continued to prevent mass genocide in several countries by bombing the hell out of its civilians, police, army, teh british army and occasionally a terrorist.
The new York city conucil offices, condemend since the beginning of their design have been scrapped, thank god.
Unfortunately this hair brained scheme has so far cost the tax payer £5 million (Thats $10 million to you yanks) Considering this included engineering, construction, furnishing and similar costs when all we actualy got was a drawing or two the York residents are severely worrieda s to how we spent so much.
A plane crashed ont eh runway in Madrid, reasons are unknown but it all looks a bit fishy, plane not included as part of a recal etc, my condolences go out to the families. It went in for repair due to a mechanical fault before take off, i really wouldn't want to be the engineer who did that right now. 150+ deaths, many of them children, in one day is a lot to hold over someone.
A-levels are not getting easier say the colleges, this is interesting to note as the record english results co-incide with a record rate of illiteracy in the UK.
Gary Glitter is out of prison and trying to avoid the UK where he is expected to be castrated by an angry mob on arrival.
My electricity and water bills have shot up, apparently this is due to inflation and rising costs, which goes little way towards explaining why these companies are still posting record profits. Bastards.
