PushingJelly

So much going on at the moment, I’m too busy doing stuff to get to write regularly. Anyhoo, here’s a synopsis.Christmas:

Santa stopped at our house for possibly the last time this year. Little bud is at that age where he knows about the whole Santa Claus thing but doesn’t want to talk or think about it too much. It is actually quite endearing and my daughter went through the same thing. Wifey was devistated when one year girley said ”

Mum, I know about Santa but it is OK to pretend, isn’t it?”. Sweet ha? Not many presents with my name on them this year.

Wifey bought me an Pod touch in November for Xmas which exhausted the Bradley pressie fund. I have no reason to complain of course and am more than happy with my gift.

Car:

Also arriving at Christmas time was my spanking new Honda Civic EX 1.8 V-TEC. It has more buttons that the bridge of the Starship Enterprise, goes like stink and handles like it is on rail tracks. Apart from a couple of niggles I am very happy with it.

Niggles? Well there’s an annoying intermittent buzz coming from inside the Driver’s door, and then there’s the iPod connector.Now I paid £250 of my hard earned to have the Honda iPod connection fitted to my new car. I figured that I now have a spare video iPod (5th Gen) that can live in the Civic permanently and I so hated all those extra cables from the iPod to the TomTom to the cassette player in the Punto. It would be neat and tidy, and it is. My niggle is one of functionality. Bearing in mind I bought the model of car with integrated Sat-Nav and have a factory fitted 5″ widescreen digital LCD monitor in my dash to display it on. Why then, when I am running my iPod does my lovely colour display just show the word “Extension”?

Why is it that despite that display and the large control knob, similar in function to the iPod’s own dial wheel, I am limited to seven specially named (“honda1″ – “honda7″) playlists on the iPod and see only track numbers in the clock display, shown using seven segment display numbers. Ooo it is so annoying.

Work

I have worked at the same company for eleven years now and throuout that time I have teaterd on the edge of unemployment. Some years it has been self inflicted, some years it has been a ritualised purging of staff we seem to go through on a regular basis. Well once again there is upheaval. This time however, it is serious. There’s been a virtual coup de tat by new management and a major re-org is upon us. I fully suspect large swathes of the staff (the ones who have stuck around that is – many have already gone), to be out on their ear as soon as the company can get shot of them.I can’t go into much detail for obvious reasons, however I suspect that the long delayed plan to eradicate Macs from the company will raise it’s depressing head again soon. There will be some rebellion in the ranks but it will quickly be quashed. More about this as more detail comes to light but remember this, just because I’m paranoid, it doesn’t mean they are not all out to get me.

Discos and Photos

My bud Dave and I are still DJ’ing and snapping at the local sports club hall, the manager there, Ray, supplies us with bookings and we work the punters thirst until the attempt to drink the bar dry. It is a kind of symbiotic relationship. We have done a few recently, including a new years party and have made a little pocket money for ourselves.

Dave has started his own side line and goes to other people’s night clubs and takes pictures there as well. I was a bit skeptical about it and a little worried about the whole affair but give him his due, Dave is a tryer.So that’s it for now. Life goes on, (although we have also had the flu so not very healthily).The work thing was starting to get me down a bit but I think that a sense of perspective is always useful. I look at the stuff happening in Africa, the natural disasters that happen across the world, the wars, death, disease and destruction described on the TV news and the papers and I think, nope – we are not badly off, and although it is possible for much of our relatively idyllic life to turn to poo in short order, we still have a long way to go before we have it as bad as some of those folks who still manage to hold their heads high and manage to smile at life and things it throws at them.

Happy 2008 everyone.