Online Friends

Getting to know someone online is all well and safe, and can pave the way for a good real-life friendship; but meeting them face to face for the first time is quite different. It's almost like you've been told about this person by a friend who knows them well, but you can still feel a little remote at the initial stage of real life meeting. It's not even the same as getting to know them by chatting on the phone first, 'cos you can still project quite a lot of personality and feeling into a telephone conversation.

Tags: internet friends dating

Fast Dogs

I've gone to the dogs now. Greyhounds to be precise. Went out to the Wimbledon stadium to go watch some races and bet on a few the night before last, and I didn't win anything. My mate won on about 3 races, but only cos he was fairly flexible in his bets and didn't win much each time.

Of course, the two times I didn't bet but knew what I would have bet on, the dogs came home and I could have won a bit - not sure how much a forecast (betting which dog will come 1st and 2nd in that order) would have got me but I could have got one if I'd bothered to start betting a bit earlier. We're not talking much money, but it was annoying.

Some trivia: I remember hearing somewhere that greyhounds are actually incredibly fast off-the-line, and can be doing 40mph within a few bounds - even faster than cheetah's over the early steps. Cheetah's of course are faster and can keep up the acceleration for longer. But still impressive.

A fun night anyway. Although the mobile reception was rather messed up with a massive amount of steel around in the stadium.

Tags: dogs gambling greyhounds

I'm not dead

I just haven't thought of anything to post about that I've remembered when I have been home or in the mood to log on and write about. I'm sure I'll think of something as soon as I've posted this though... Typical.

No space

Lots of people have the group of friends that they forward funnies to that they get via SMS text or email. Well here's one that really (just today) happened to a customer calling one of the support guys at our office.

His keyboard broke two years ago, leaving him with no Space bar. He first created a login and signed on to our site three years ago. We have an automatic login (via cookies/whatever) so regular users don't need to re-enter their password every day from the same PC, as many sites do. So this user hasn't needed to retype his password ever since he first logged on. He had an issue today, so rung our support department; who told him to clear his cache and retry. It fixed the problem; but only after he'd failed to log on because he couldn't type a space into the login form.

For god's sake; a new keyboard is 5-10quid unless you want a flash one. I really can't believe he's got away using email, posting any content at all without his Space key for two whole years.

The temporary fix was to find a space elsewhere and copy and paste it in with his mouse or the Edit menu. I've had times in Windows 95/98 when the drivers have messed up or some program has got itself in a twist and I've had to copy and paste text to be able to do something before I could restart it; but for two years! Oh my god!

Tags: unbelievable support

30

I'm 30. What a great weekend it was too. Handily, it fell on the Saturday and I was out partying until at least chuck-out time at 2am. Got back home at 3, slept til 2.30pm and awoke with a bit of a hangover (was the spirits that did it, I'm sure! Nothing to do with the pints I sank! Honest!).

I was such a party animal I didn't open my presents or cards til Sunday at about 4pm. I hadn't been at my flat since Friday morning anyway so I wouldn't have been able to pick the cards up.

It's been a pretty awesome and very social month (and rather expensive - ouch), in fact I haven't watched anywhere near as many films as I would do normally (only 3-4ish so far I think). I need to recover next month (financially, for one thing).

Tags: birthday social

I'm all booked up.

Knowing my titles, you'd think I meant I'd been reading lots. But no, it's me being busy every weekend this month that's inspired this post.

Last weekend I was out every day: Friday with a mate after work (meal,pub in Camden); Saturday clubbing and made a new friend and had lots of fun - didn't return to my flat until Monday evening (don't worry, I didn't skip work). It was a bloody great weekend.

Next weekend I'm going to a party in Nottingham.

Weekend after that is Easter and I shall be helping a mate move into a flat and seeing the family.

After that is my 30th birthday, I expect to be out lots.

At the end of the month I'm partying again, out for the majority of the weekend I suspect.

Anyone got any tips on how to cope? :-)

Tags: social