I’ve mentioned numerous times previously about “double shift Monday”, well, as it was bank holiday it became “double shift Tuesday”. Nothing interesting in that but it sets the scene for the beginning of the story.

As usual recently, I got bugger all sleep before the first shift and sat upon this here PC, about 23:30 last night, I heard what I thought was a screech and a bang so leapt out of my chair to look at the S-bend I live on, through the kitchen window, to see if yet another car had failed at negotiating a bend. Apparently it was the other side on the straight so I assume it was driven by a drunk. I did try to drive through it on my way to work but when I saw the fire & rescue crew I realised it was probably worse than I’d imagined and took my usual route to work instead.

The morning shift went well as usual, although I was quite concerned at one drop when a car kept slowly driving past me while I was getting into a building to deliver some stuff. I got back to the depot just gone 5am and as I walked in I noticed, out the corner of my eye, someone move in their van, I caught a glimpse of them in their side mirror but couldn’t see who it was so continued to sign back into the depot and drop my parcel scanner off then it was time for home. As I was signing in I saw that Laura had signed out 5 minutes before to start her delivery run so as I got into my car in the car park I sent her the usual stalker text “501, who’s run is that? xx” but she was already texting me “What were you doing sneaking about? Mmm? x x”, it was her being sneaky in the van I’d just spotted. We missed each other by seconds, alas, spent all day talking to each other as usual.

Second shift came round and the day was looking fairly brilliant, Laura and I spent 20 minutes together in the depot before setting off on our travels. She looked incredible, more so than usual. Then we spent the day texting each other as is our usual thing to do until I sent her a text saying “Just called the Police! What a shit day”. Admittedly, I should have maybe included more information as she spent the next two hours worrying about me but my van was randomly attacked by some strange chap who wanted to get me out of the van so he could “knock me the fuck out” for absolutely no reason what so ever. It was later revealed, after 4 Police Officers intervened, that said chap was an ex pro boxer and been hit in the head a few too many times as his excuse for laying an attack out on my van was that he thought I was there to take his wife from him. While it would have been easier to slap said fellow it’s generally not a good idea to do it when wearing a highly visible work uniform that has the company name splashed all over it and when someone tries to get into your van first through the window then the doors, when you have lots of stuff on your van, it’s actually written in our “manual” to not leave the van until Police arrive.. so, that’s what I did.

After spending over an hour with the lovely officers down at the Police station and filling out a statement I was let on my way, now very late, to complete the rest of my deliveries. Laura fussed over me saying how worried she was, my bro was ringing to see what was going off and relaying info back to the depot and I had still had over an hours worth of driving to get off the last of my deliveries before starting the 50 mile drive back to the depot.

It’s been a loooooong day, which started so promising, wavered in the middle then finished a little higher with Laura fussing. Man I love that girl.

I’m not interested in men in the slightest. I do however, enjoy a good knees up (and that’s not a euphemism) so Saturday (28th) I found myself heading to Manchester dressed as a character from the film “An Officer And A Gentleman” intent on partying the whole day. The only reason I agreed to go was; I figured party + lots of people + lots of booze = good times.

Saturday morning I woke nice and early, way before my alarm, so arose to get my morning fix of porridge and coffee and waste some time before heading over to the fancy dress shop. I hadn’t immediately thought that fancy dress was a valid idea until the others said they were going in fancy dress, while I was aware what the gay scene was like on parade weekend with drag queens et al, it was my assumption that only the floats and followers dressed up. Not wanting to look the odd-bod I said I’d go dressed up too.

Had my recent weight-loss programme worked a little better, I was looking at something that flaunted ones stomach, alas, I don’t quite have that flauntable stomach just yet so decided against anything that showed unnecessary excess flesh, excess being the primary word here. The fancy dress shop lady opened early specifically for us and so we went in and discussed the options. She did suggest some rather daring costumes, to which my bottle went from “yea, I’ll wear anything, the gayer the better” to “I don’t have the balls to wear that” and settled for the aforementioned costume which I thought was a bit subtle really, although pulled off quite well being my height.

The car journey to Manchester raised some funny looks from others when they looked round to see a car containing 2 tarts, an officer, a sailor and a rather camp looking police officer although it was not as embarrassing as when it came to actually walking round Manchester outer-centre heading into the parade area when it became all too apparent that absolutely NO ONE else thought that fancy dress was a good idea. I really do mean no one. We walked up to the queue for the tickets (wrist bands) and proceeded to join the back only to be gaupped at by the other two hundred or so people waiting patiently in line. Maybe it was the fact that my trousers were actually see-through (good job I put white boxers on that day!).

After waiting for 30 minutes or so and enduring a few short but excessive downpours we were finally heading to the parade to watch the floats. At first I thought to myself “well, this is interesting” with a sarcastic tone to my inner voice. I guess I’d imagined more of a Brazilian-style parade (more extravagant, bigger, louder, etc) but instead got a few poorly designed floats (some still bearing the “Salford” van hire logo), some great dancers, some great looking guys in drag and equally great girls just looking hot, quite frankly, along with some equally terrible polar opposites. It wasn’t until a group of marchers came down the line that I realised the meaning of the entire parade. It wasn’t about who could look good, or dance the best, or pass off for most extreme transformation from their daily self or even the best float most skillfully crafted, it is about being able to be yourself, regardless of your sexual inclination, celebrating acceptance and diversity, fundraising for the LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) community and raising awareness to ‘members’ and non-members alike.

At first I felt a little strange, not because homosexuality offends me but because I felt it was widely assumed that everyone at the parade was gay, and as I was there, this also included me. Not that this was a problem, it just felt, different. Then it started. Two women randomly pulled me aside, playfully groping my every appendage, telling me how good they thought I looked towering over them as a 6’2″ Naval Officer.

Moments later I received a tap on the shoulder, 2 lads wanted a picture with me, which I gracefully accepted. Then another tap, 2 ladies wanted a photo with me as their male friend took the photo. Minutes later, the male friend returned and he wanted a picture with me. I, being the only straight male of our group, was loving the attention and made the 2 gay members jealous! I began to relax and from there on in it became a game to see just how many people I could attract.

The parade finished and we headed into the “Village” to find a pub, there were thousands of people all over the streets and the pubs were insanely busy, waiting 20 minutes to get served became a common factor that would last the entire day. Once the beer became a factor in our day, it pretty much featured heavily for the next 8 or 9 hours, drifting from pub to pub just to say we’ve been in them. In the second pub we visited, I was confronted by a, well, dirty old man, quite frankly, who decided that I looked “fucking gorgeous” (his words) and attempted to _passionately_ kiss me, at which point I made emergency diversion tactics my utmost priority and decided that although side-stepping out of the way was my best option, it could have been offensive and played the old “turn the head” card instead. I did expect people to cheek-kiss but hadn’t even thought of the possibility that people were there for “more”.

After being told I wasn’t gay by another member of our crew, he took offence and walked off, only to follow me round from a distance for a short while until being told in no uncertain terms that continuing to do so may result in unnecessary force. He was harmless enough, I think that some people had been on the beer longer than we had so we carried on to another pub and forgot about it.

Throughout the next unfathomable number of hours I drew in more photo shoots, gropes, bum pinches, kisses (on the cheek only) and suggestive looks and loved every single one of them! It was great having so much attention, regardless of the fact none of them were in the slightest bit attractive to me, nor would they become after several more Guinness but it was fun ‘going with the flow’ and accepting that if you dress up at gay pride, you WILL attract attention.

We didn’t really see many people in fancy dress, maybe 100 out of the thousands of people there, which meant we got lots and lots of people asking for photographs. Once one person saw that we were OK allowing people to take photos, more and more people came over to ask for photos, it was like we were part of the entertainment more than just every day folks enjoying a beer.

The nicest part of the whole day was that everyone was so at ease, they could truly be theirselves, holding their partners, dressing up if they so desired, just enjoying the fact that there was no trouble, no fear of being outcasts. It was nice to see so many beautiful women too, shame I wasn’t their type

I went for a beer and came back with new friends and new understanding.

I felt AWFUL today, I struggled not to vomit and had to take some Ibuprofen for my headache but trundled off to work anyway and it would appear that a bad day was in the midst.

First, the notorious bank holiday weekend motorway traffic, then I got kept waiting ages at one of my destinations, then the Police shut off a road due to some idiot having an accident so I had to detour round god knows where with a few hundred other people all muttering “where the fuck are we going?”, then my headache returned with a vengeance, then I got stuck in HUGE tailbacks caused by the detour and made it back to the depot at 19:55 when I usually get back about 19:20.

Although a lot of the other drivers had crap days too, so we all had a jolly good laugh about it.

On a lighter note, I am going partying in Manchester tomorrow. Fancy dress ahoy and lots of homosexuals! I think they’re all from Mars or something but I’ve been told I’ll be OK as I’m too ugly for them, whatever that means! Beware, pictures may land on Twitter

(The last part is a joke, everybody knows the gays are from Uranus).

One minute I’m doing double-shift Monday and secretly worrying about how much I’ll get to speak to Laura this week as she’s only working 2am-6am so she’ll be out doing her own thang, would she have time for me? The next minute it’s Thursday already!

It would appear on Monday, she was too busy, but she did say hello which was enough to keep me happy. The rest of the week, she has been pretty busy but she’s made an effort to talk to me, which has definitely made me smile.

We are definitely getting closer every week, which, when you talk as often as we do, is inevitable I guess, if she could just stop dragging her ass back to that twat of a boyfriend (her expletive, not mine) I think we might get a chance. I’m not sure why girls are so attracted to people that treat them bad but christ, if yer boyfriend says “well I’ll go off with other girls then” when you don’t want to go into town with him one Saturday because you’re having a party then you have issues. Seriously.

He is her personal trainer also, so it’s no doubt he does this to quite a lot of girls, and as Laura is a triathlete, it doesn’t make things easy but I think she is starting to see just how bad he is when they play their little “on-off” games, then of course, she sees how nice I am in comparison.

I think we’d be really good together, we have SO much in common, pretty much every day we find yet another thing that we share, there’s way too much to write here.

Anyhoo, todays post wasn’t going to be about Laura, it’s just we were talking last night and I think she said something she shouldn’t have as she went very quiet afterwards, I shall try and find out today and maybe tell more

Having said that, I can’t actually remember what todays post was going to be so I shall end here.

So, as I have previously mentioned, Monday is a double shifter and yesterday I got no sleep yet again due to the fact that I had another brain wave of installing Windows on my main PC (which runs Linux) in order for me to run Adobe Fireworks (mainly). This is pretty much the only reason I need a Windows install, for the simple fact that I just cannot use Gimp at all and I don’t really like booting Windows inside Linux using VirtualBox.

I backed up my Linux install (which was insanely easy, using tar to save the home folder, and that was pretty much it (unlike Windows that takes forever and has files dotted everywhere!)) and about 10am started partitioning my 1TB disk into several sections, 100GB for Windows, 4 or 5 partitions for Linux and the rest as a save-drive for both systems on a RAID 0 (fakeraid as it’s a BIOS one). After fecking about for about 3 hours I realised that Ubuntu simply would not install on a RAID 0 dual boot and work without some serious headaches so I Googled on the laptop and went through about 6 different how-to’s using different scenarios all to no avail.

After getting sick of trying the same things expecting different results (insanity plea, anyone?) I decided to take a different approach and split up the RAID 0 into 2 seperate disks, after all, we all know how dangerous RAID 0 really is, so it wasn’t a huge decision to have to make. Further dozens of installs of Windows and Linux later over different disks kept failing with boot records corrupting and boot loaders playing fuck-up I finally decided to give it one last shot. 14 hours later and I finally had a working Windows install, patched up, and an active Linux install but I couldn’t boot into it.

At this point I had to go to work, so tootled off for 8 hours, came home, spent 4 hours in bed, went BACK to work for the second shift and tonight, absolutely knackered, I finally managed to get the Windows boot loader to accept Linux and give me an option, upon boot, to load either Windows or Linux.

After a few more finishing touches, I have Linux booting on default (as I prefer Linux) with the option of dropping into Windows should I want to.

I do so hate these long, full day learning curve sessions but that is how I learn best, using the “break and fix” method. Doing something right first time doesn’t teach you how to fix it if it goes wrong. I, however, am quite confident I could quite easily dual boot another system spanning seperate disks, without a hitch.

I LOVE Linux (reasons possibly coming in a secondary post at a later date), it’s so fast, updates insanely quickly and just works so well, plus it’s FREE. What more could you want? Windows, well, unfortunately, it is still required for some things. I was gutted when I had to install Windows again, but now I have it working as a backup, boot-only-when-needed OS, I’m a very happy chappy.

A very tired, happy chappy.

Good night!

As much as I LOVE the weekend, I also currently hate them. Why? Because I don’t get to speak to Laura, at all. We’ve had an awesome week and she’s left her boyfriend (again) (for now) although she still shies away from anything I suggest to do with “us”, while I don’t pester her asking her out, I do sometimes suggest we do something together which is usually answered with a change of subject! I don’t quite understand her as we are getting quite close but she still seems to blockade the last hurdle. Anyhoo, she’s awesome and I’m completely smitten.

I was meant to be climbing Helvellyn via Striding Edge again last night, setting off around midnight to reach the peak and sit watching the sun rise however it was postponed due to family issues of one of the guys, hopefully everything is OK and we can attempt it soon.

One thing I have always wanted to do is run my own business but so far I have failed to find my niche marketplace or something I have enough confidence to face the world and say “I’m competent to make this my business”. I could go into IT and do websites/installs/repairs etc but there are SO many companies in Doncaster already and I can’t leave my job to go and start a company and as I work 1pm-8pm I’d have no time to be open!

Saying this, most of the Doncaster web “designers” are piss poor, and I don’t use that expletive lightly. They are seriously bad. One company uses the same template/design for 4 or 5 different companies, only changing colour and content. One woman uses dozens of tables instead of DIVs. Others are just plain terrible who think that using Frontpage or Dreamweaver makes them a “designer” good enough to get paid to do it. While Dreamweaver is a handy tool, being able to use it DOES NOT make you a web designer, you need to know SO MUCH MORE than that. I’ll be the first to admit I get very sloppy with my personal work and don’t code as neatly as I should but it all works, so shush.

I do have a large project I’d like to launch but I’ll need help with coding it (as it really is large) and no one I’ve approached so far is interested in working on it. I personally think it’s quite a good idea as no other site in the UK does this, there are similar sites, 4 big ones, but none with my spin on it.

Anyhoo, I REALLY need to get some exercise done! That, today, means cycling! Unless it rains in the next 5 minutes, which it probably will do.

My reason for not going is not because I don’t want to but because I’ve not been sleeping all that well lately and although I set my alarm for 9am every day, I keep sleeping way past it and really struggling to get out of bed early.

To add insult to injury, the past 2 days have been lovely weather, weather you could quite easily cycle in yet I’ve been getting back from work so late that I haven’t even had time to catch up on missed gym work with a good 10 or 20 mile bike ride.

Aside from that, things have been going fairly well lately. Laura is her usual awesome, lovely self, keeping me busy all day with dozens of texts (which is probably costing us a fortune!) and work has been relatively OK considering it is actually work.

I’m climbing Helvellyn again on Friday night (yes, NIGHT) so we get to watch the sun rise over the mountains from the peak on Saturday morning. I can’t wait! I’ve (finally) bought a portable, solar mobile charger, which I’m hoping actually arrives in time, so hopefully I can use my phone on these trips as normally it runs out within an hour!! I shall be packing tomorrow and then waking up as late as possible Friday, going to work, getting home about 8.30pm, a quick shower then driving up to the Lakes and straight up the mountain! It’ll be one hectic day! Bring it on!

Double shift Mondays I call them, for more than obvious reasons. I work 2 shifts, my first shift I start 00:45am and usually get home for about 6am and then start again at 2pm and usually get home about 8pm.

I usually get up early on a Sunday so that I’m tired by about 6pm and can get in some sleep before I have to be up just before midnight, however, this wasn’t to be the case today (or yesterday).

I had a suddenly mad idea about 8pm last night to start tidying my office, edit the design of this website (albeit slightly) and start some other bits and bobs. By the time 9pm came and went, I decided I had to stay up in case my alarm would no longer wake me!

It’s not too bad, staying awake, it is however, not recommended when you drive as many miles as I do, but as a seasoned driver, I can manage on no sleep for the first shift.

Well, the day started OK, I had very little deliveries and managed to get back to the depot just gone 5am, then due to some less than desired text messages my day went from good to pretty crap which it stayed until 6pm when the text messages resumed their normality and happiness was restored.

All in all, a rough day, lack of sleep, excess coffee, up and down feelings but ended on a high note and boy am I glad it’s over with!

My issue with blogging is, well, several things, but mainly; nobody reads it so why bother? and secondly, how on EARTH do you write something interesting all the time?! I rarely do anything interesting so how can I write anything so? Anyway, today I’ve thought that while it would be nice to be articulate, eloquent and interesting in written form, I am none of these, but sometimes I just NEED to write things down and have so many unanswered questions that I think I may just do a quick very quick blog every few days about how my life is going.

It may not be interesting, it may not have depth or texture, but it will be me and no one’s perfect

At this point, most of them decided to go about explaining the layout of Wave and which box does what, none of them, however, actually sold Wave.

For a few weeks I’d pondered whether to bother asking Google for a beta invite or not and many a time filled in the required form, but never got round to submitting the request, mainly because I don’t know anyone else that has Wave access and thought it was pretty useless without knowing someone to collaborate with. How wrong.

Today I randomly played around with Twitter, searching for XMPP mentions and decided to give a quick search to Wave to see what people thought of it, luckily enough I stumbled upon (no, not StumbleUpon!) a lady who had just tweeted that she had some invites available and I sent her a quick message to see if she would be so kind to invite me so I could finally put my mind to rest (I’m like a kid at Christmas when it comes to new geek toys), luckily enough she did (I won’t mention your name incase you get invite-request bombed, but thanks again!) and 10 minutes later I logged into Wave for the first time.

At this point I was quite disappointed, I’ve seen screenshots before so knew what Wave looked like but mine was so empty! The only contact I had was the kind lady who invited me in the first place (who I don’t actually know) and she was no longer online so effectively, I had absolutely no one to test this thing with. I did what geeks do best, googled for articles on Wave to see how to use it more efficiently, that is when my disappointment turned into amazement.

With a simple search for “with:public” in the Wave search field, I was a-flood with public waves I could intrude on, who needs friends on contact lists when you just opened up a can of whoop-ass.

I gave up looking at public waves around the 471 mark, at which point I’d found a few I was interested in to start off my Wave career. I chose a sudoku wave, a “We’re from the UK” wave and decided to hop onto a few RPG (role playing game) waves.

The whole picture

Wave is, first and foremost, a collaboration tool, a tool for like minded people to get together and discuss, plot and plan on any subject they so desire. As with many ‘tools’, they can be used in ways they weren’t necessarily built for, but work non the less, and this is where the whole public wave thing comes in.

Waves don’t have a limit per se but can quite easily get out of hand, if you try viewing a wave that has 300 or 400 messages on it, you will soon get lost and bogged down by your browser trying to compute it all, this is where it struggles as a “public” not-what-wave-was-built-for-but-still-works application. At this time, public waves can be edited by anyone without rules, so in theory, someone can really piss on your parade by deleting everything or writing a bucket load of faff, alas, Google is working on this and while it is possible to “play back” who has done what, once waves get this big, the playback feature will just die a horrible death.

I see a lot of people talk about Wave as a replacement to IM and email. While Wave does have similar features, for example, I had written something earlier and actually saw the person replying to me typing, letter for letter, typo for typo, I don’t think it is meant to replace anything at all, I think its main feature is as previously mentioned, to make it easier for teams to work on projects or ideas as a closed entity, behind the scenes tool.

As a closed collaboration tool, Wave is exceedingly good, even in beta form. Everyone can edit everything (closed waves will only have people you invite as members) and I can see this being a very useful, much required tool for development teams of all kinds.

The thing that makes Wave special, in my eyes, is not only can people of a wave access everything (unless options change later) and there is a clear timeline of who has done what, there are also gadgets and robots! I won’t go into massive detail here but the basic difference between gadgets and bots are gadgets are ‘client interactive’ (such as maps, etc) and bots are ‘server side’ (they work on waves without your interaction).

Gadgets can be simple things like highlighting tools or, as mentioned, maps plugins. Bots work “behind the scenes” and can do any number of tasks such as turn @word into a link to twitters’ @username automatically or send you an IM when a wave has been updated or edited. People have no “say” in what robots do, once a robot is added to a wave, it does what it does best (depending on which bot you invite, depends on what actions it takes).

Google are obviously, first and foremost, search giants, and it is quite obvious when it comes to Wave, there are atleast 20 different search terms to get the best out of Wave, whether this will decrease or increase once Wave is finally received is yet to be seen.

The current truth

Wave is still in beta and by my reckoning still has a good 3 months hard coding before it is released properly, the main problem with it at this moment in time is the sheer lag everyone experiences. It does feel a bit like I’m trying to interweb on a 56k modem all over again, one minute everything is running smoothly, the next everything is frozen while it buffers or updates or whatever it is doing.

If you are lucky enough to get an invite and use firefox, I suggest leaving firefox to your normal browsing and download Chrome just to run Wave. For whatever reason, firefox seriously struggles with running Wave after the first few minutes while Chrome seems to be able to handle it better.

As with most beta software, there are lots of things that need ironing out currently, such as random “crashes” (you’ll be asked to refresh, not restart your browser), the fact that there are no “settings” yet and there needs to be a few more thousand servers added to make things quicker but all in all, I’m impressed.

Verdict

As a project/team collab. tool, Wave will work wonders, it already does and it’s not finished. I can’t wait to see more bots and more gadgets and the super smooth response times/useability that we have come to demand and respect from Google.

As a public chat tool, it won’t replace IM or forums or email but it will compliment them nicely, people are already coming up with unique and cool ways of using Wave (such as the Wave Adventure RPG (Role Playing Game)) that already has players.

I use StumbleUpon like it’s going out of business, I’ve now just added Google Wave to that list.