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Are companies just not trying any more? Recently I bought a GPS from Amazon and now I keep getting emails about gps deals – isn’t it unlikely I’m in the market for another?

And Hotwire, booked a Hawaii hotel with them and keep getting “great” offers from them for another. Not only is their email pointless, it’s also usually rubbish – the “from” rate is never available.

Come on guys try a little.

Post-Vegas I had vowed to do the following:

1. Seriously start to lose weight – no alcohol during the week, no chocolate, snacks during the week, walk to/from downtown twice a week
2. Go flying – I haven’t flown without an instructor since last September. I seem to have lost the confidence to fly alone.
3. Arrange mandolin lessons, at last
4. Do something in the evenings other than sit, surf the web and watch UFC and CSI repeats on TV.
5. Make some puppet theatre

It’s Thursday night and I sit here with wine by my side, chocolate stains on my lap, walking shoes still clean, no entries in my flying logbook, no further along learning the mandolin than the day I bought it, watching CSI and being looked at by puppets who are saying “you suck”.

I go to Von’s in San Diego once a week, sometimes twice if my weekly ‘meal plan’ gets compromised by greed or desire for something different. And every time I have to squeeze my way by somebody in the doorway selling something or wanting a donation or wanting a signature on the way in and/or out.

“It’s for charity” – yeah, last time I bought something for charity I spent $15 and found out that only 75c was being donated.

“Don’t you want every kid to be fingerprinted?” – against that on so many levels

Can’t I just buy some friggin’ groceries? Ugh!

Time was I blogged quite often but recently I am sure you have noticed not so much these days. And whilst I would never claim I wrote very much that was worth your time, I did feel like I had something to write. But not these days. I’m sure micro blogging a lot over at Twitter but I think I’ve pretty much reached a level of banality there that should probably get me un-followed.

So what’s up? Well, in order to have something to say one must have something going on and, well, there isn’t a single thing going on in my life. During the week I get up, go do my job, come back, go to sleep, rinse and repeat. I interact with no one outside work. There is probably an argument to say this statement is bogus but I stand by the fact that I have not a single friend in the USA, no one to go grab a beer with, no one to just hang out with (and yes there might 2 or 3 people who would be upset that I don’t count them as ‘friends’). Yeah, boo hoo, cry me a river – feel free to come get my mandolin if you don’t have a violin handy.

Weekends are a little different. I get to spend time with my sweet and lovely wife and loving dogs. But thanks to things I do not blog about, home is not somewhere I feel particularly comfortable in. And I have no friends there – we shop, we enjoy food and wine, we spend time at my in-laws. And if we do go to a social event I feel ill at ease as there’s no one who I feel comfortable with, or who even feels comfortable with me. Everyone wants to include me but I’m different, I’m difficult, I don’t fit in.

So yeah I could blog about how fed up I am, how futile it is to wake up every day and find myself still breathing but you don’t want to read that. You can turn to any news network and read how bad it is in the world today, what’s one more sad sap on a sorry blog? Heck, I know I don’t want to read that. So this blog will stay mostly dark for some time longer. I don’t see anything improving this side of the ‘other side’ but who knows? Flight 1549 survived a double engine failure: miracles do happen.

Friends don’t let friends blog drunk, but since I have none I went ahead anyway. I might delete this in the morning so enjoy my reflection while you can.

Last week, Teri, my Dad and I went to Applebee’s in El Centro and had without doubt our worst restaurant experience in a while.

• We ordered Samuel Adams drafts and they just tasted bad, quite sweet and the colour was all wrong. We sent them back and the manager bought new ones but they looked identical to me. Dad thought his tasted ok, I was still dubious but we kept them. By the end of the meal neither of us had drunk more than half the glass – they were not good at all.
• Dad ordered the Orange Salmon but when the meal came they gave him an Orange Chicken bowl instead. We sent it back and our waitress came and apologised, said she had written it down correctly but hit the wrong button on the computer. It took about 10 minutes for the new dish to come
• Meal over, our waitress came to give us the bill, more apologies. But the bill had a charge for both the Salmon and the unwanted Orange Chicken so we had to get her back to correct it. By this time I am sure she just wanted us gone so she could forget about the whole thing.

So we paid the bill and left. I was a little surprised that we didn’t get something comp’d but maybe this level of service is the norm?

As you all know I’m into most of the social networking sites, you can find me at Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn on a regular basis. And it’s been great “reconnecting” with past colleagues.

But when I look at my list of contacts, I get a large amount of career envy. Just some of the titles my ex-peers hold:

• Director of IT
• CIO
• Vice President of IT
• Financial Controller
• CTO
• Owner of their own consulting business

And here am I, peasant worker bee for a big conglomerate. I know some people will say ‘but you moved across an ocean etc’ and that might be true, and might even be a ‘big deal’ but ultimately I’m about to turn 43 and I am just another programmer on the treadmill. How come all these guys did so much better than me?

I’m so tired of the lazy asses at work. We’re supposed to be professionals but perhaps because we are in the games industry it’s ok to be an immature lazy ass?

• At least 3 or 4 times a week the stalls in the toilets don’t get flushed, or the person before me has flushed but left the seat protector on the seat. If you don’t think my ass is clean enough that you want yours touching the same seat, what makes you think I want to pick up a piece of paper that your oh-so-clean derrière has been on? And as for not flushing at all, there are no words fit for this blog.
• We get free sodas at work, it’s a fairly new thing and proving pretty popular. It didn’t take long for our admin assistant to decide she was above restocking the fridge so now its up to us to keep it supplied. No big deal, see it empty – go get some cans. But no, see it empty, leave it that way until someone else does it for you. Or, go to the cupboard and take one can for yourself and leave the fridge empty. What next – you need me to flush the toilet for you??? Ah, yes….

So my Macbook Pro is set to turn off the screen after 10 minutes of activity, but then if I play a movie the screen switches off after 10 minutes unless I hit a key or touch the mousepad. I don’t want to do that. Yes, I know I can change the setting before I put the movie on but wouldn’t it make sense to let QuickTime (or whatever) override that setting when something ‘hands off’ is happening?

Forget Jared’s “where’s the meat” $5 footlong special, get ye to Popeye’s Chicken for their Tuesday special – a leg and thigh for just 99c! Yep, you can get two pieces of tasty chicken and a small drink for about $2.50. Now that’s what I call a deal. The place was packed too, person in front of me wanted 10 orders – that’s 20 pieces of chicken for $10!!!!

And whilst we’re talking about Popeye’s, what’s up with that book “what to eat and what not to eat” and the section on Popeye’s saying you can eat there as long as you remove the skin. Remove the skin?? What’s the point of that? That would be like going to Morton’s Steakhouse and being only allowed to order a soup.

Another year, and here we go again. Green everywhere, people proud of their 0.0001% Irish blood (and that’s just the Guinness they plan to drink this evening), suddenly everyone wishes they knew Gaelic. Argh, enough already. Most people claiming Irish blood probably have an equal amount of (insert other European country here), why is no one going crazy for BoyWithFingerIntheDyke day? Dutch beer is sooo much better than Irish, anyway – a double victory!

So I’m telling you again people, stop it.