#72: AAC

Yesterday I went to London with Kloopy, A2 and DEATH2 for the AAC (Alphabet Alcohol Challenge).

The AAC involves visiting one Underground station for each letter of the alphabet (excluding J, X, Y and Z as there aren’t any stations that begin with those letters), finding the nearest pub, drinking a half pint and then going to the next station. We had our first half at Aldgate East at 11:04am, and finished at Waterloo at about 10:30pm. Yeggstry and genclay joined us halfway through at King’s Cross.

My feet and legs are now absolutely killing me and I can’t walk properly, but it was awesome fun. I’d think twice before doing it again, but I’m proud to say that I completed the whole challenge :)

#71: Wordpress

I’m now on Wordpress 2.5 - it’s very, very shiny indeed. I approve!

Work is busy, life is busy etc. Can’t complain at all :)

#70: i33

I attended i33 this weekend, and it was awesome fun. We (the CantFitMyN clan) played in the TF2 and Battlefield 2 tournaments, drank lots of beer, played Werewolf until the early hours, slept in the freezing cold and won prizes. I took a few photos and found some other amusing ones - I’ll upload and link them soon.

I will definitely be attending i34, as it will be summer and made of win.

#68-1: Hertford

During the summer before starting university, my friends and I were looking for some excitement. We’d all been 18 (and hence old enough to drink) for quite a while, and going out in the same old places had become rather boring - particularly when you consider that we’d actually been doing it illegally since we were 16 anyway.

For some reason, we decided to go out in Hertford, which is the county town of Hertfordshire (duh) and about a 20-minute train journey from Hitchin station. We arrived there one evening (it may have been a Friday night, I can’t remember) and set about having a few drinks - the town was quite busy and we had a good time, ending up in “Zero’s” bar at about 11pm. The place was closing shortly and we were told that we could go downstairs to their club (”Sub Zero’s”) if we paid, as it was open later. We went down, and continued the evening. The place was a bit of a dive, but the music was playing and it wasn’t too bad. Matt and Craig (my male company for the evening) were talking about Matt’s girlfriend, Jo (who was also there) in a friendly manner and there was some goading and larking about on their part as they discussed all this.

As a part of all this, Craig got Matt in a friendly headlock and ruffled his hair. At this point, everything went a bit crazy. Three bouncers rushed over to split them up, then forced each of their arms up their backs and frog-marched them to the exit. I rushed after them, realising what had happened, and tried to explain to the bouncers that they’d made a mistake. Craig and Matt were also doing the same at this point, but of course nobody was listening. They got to the top of the stairs and were escorted to the front entrance and pushed out. Craig turned round and raised his hands, saying “whoa, whoa, you’ve got it all wrong mate”… at which point the bouncer punched him in the face. He didn’t just do it once either, he gave him three or four hard punches - made Craig’s nose bleed but didn’t manage to knock him down. I watched the whole thing happen in astonishment, and when we were standing out on the street afterwards, Matt was full of righteous indignation and called the police.

We went to court on two separate occasions for that incident, but in the end the judge didn’t convict him due to lack of evidence on the CPS’ part. The CCTV footage from outside the club was never obtained because it conveniently went “missing” (funny that) and there just wasn’t enough other evidence to find the bastard guilty. He was suspended from work for six months or so while the court proceedings were going through, and I hope with every fibre of my being that he sat at home and worried about going to jail for a long time. I’m not sure if he still works there, mainly because we’ve never been back.

#68: Bouncer Experiences

Unfortunately I’m not talking about psybnc, as you might expect from a geek’s blog… although, for the record, I dislike psybnc. I’m actually talking about “door staff”, colloquially known and hereafter referred to as “bouncers”.

An online acquaintance of mine had a bad experience with some bouncers last night, and wrote about it on Facebook. I was pretty shocked after reading his note, because it described violent episodes and total lack of reason on the bouncers’ part when he hadn’t done anything to provoke their ire. When I thought about it though, I realised that it’s not actually that uncommon. I’ve had two violent experiences with bouncers in different areas of the country, and although it wasn’t me that was involved in the violence on either occasion, I remember them both as clear as day. My next two posts are going to details these experiences, in sympathy with someone else who didn’t deserve what happened to him.

#67: Tuesday

It’s Tuesday, and this is awesome!

(Yes, I’m a little bit bored in the last half-hour of work, and I don’t have a lot to write about.)

Tuesdays are actually my favourite day of the week. I go to the gym on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and so I don’t get home until later on, and then have to make dinner and don’t usually get to sit down and relax until about 8pm, which is nasty. On Tuesdays, however, I get home at about 6pm and I can immediately start my relaxation. Win!

I am listening to my recommended radio station on last.fm, and it’s actually pretty good - I’ve heard a few things that I shall be following up on. If you fancy listening too… click!

#66: meh.

I’m absolutely fine, I just wanted to post a picture of one of my new ThinkGeek t-shirts (-:

#65: Untitled

It’s blog o’clock.

After having made myself ache by playing with my powerball so much, I decided to learn to start it by hand (as this is apparently what the pros do). It was quite easy once I worked out how, with the help of an excellent YouTube video. Don’t mind the dude’s cheesy voiceover, just watch exactly how he holds it and what he does and copy it. You’ll get there soon enough.

Unfortunately, I bottled out of deleting my Myspace account last week. I never use the thing to edit or do anything with my profile, but I’ve realised that I’m far too nosy to get rid of one of the only methods I have of looking at photos of old friends. I am sorry to have to admit this, but it seems that Myspace has beaten me. Perhaps in the future I will be able to break the hold it has over me!

I have been working at home a lot more recently, I have to say that it’s absolutely awesome. I also got a substantial pay rise from my boss, which I was very pleased about. To celebrate, I bought myself a nice shiny new 22″ monitor to put on my desk at home, so I now have an awesome dual desktop setup going on. I also paid substantially less than the price Amazon are currently quoting - something more in the region of £150, which was very, very reasonable. The monitor itself is fantastic - picture quality is superb (particularly in World of Warcraft, which is absolutely stunning at 1680×1050), it looks brilliant on the desk and it makes doing all my work a whole lot more pleasurable.

I transferred my level 61 alliance rogue over to Kloopy’s server recently, after he got back into playing WoW regularly. I’m just about to ding level 65, and it’s all going very well so far. I’m using Jame’s Alliance Levelling Guide, which has got mixed reviews from people in the past, but I have to say that I find it very easy to follow, and I’ve managed to get four whole levels in not a great deal of time. I’ve not played an Alliance character in ages but it’s all slowly coming back to me. Playing on a PvE server is also very different to the PvP servers I’m used to, and I find being able to level without the threat of being ganked to be a dream come true.

I also ordered myself an 8-bit tie the other day. They look great - see for yourself! (Kloopy and I realised afterwards that we probably should have taken the photo while not staring directly at the sun, however)

#64: Powerball aches

I purchased one of these on a whim the other day after someone on IRC suggested that they were fun. I have to say that he wasn’t wrong… my forearms, hands and wrists ache but I still want to play with this thing. They’re relentlessly addictive!

My top score so far is 11121rpm - I think I need gloves to go any faster than that…

#63: Goodbye, Myspace

A guy is so pissed off with Myspace that he’s decided to create an “international delete your Myspace account” day.

I find this very amusing, and in fact there’s even a Facebook event you can sign up to, to notify people that you’ll be doing the same thing. I was thinking about getting rid of my account anyway as I don’t ever use Myspace any more and find it utterly hideous… I might as well try and send some sort of message by doing it on the same date as a load of other people.

If you have a Myspace account, I strongly urge you to read the blog post linked above and consider joining the cause. Let’s say no to shit CSS styling, spammy adverts and even poor security…