It’s a Blog ! Not a Log !

that’s what I am, just not had the energy to post on the blog on a regular basis for quite a while now, think its been the winter blues that have been causing it, all these dark nights when I’ve been getting home from work’s to blame.

I shall attempt to remedy that by telling you about things that I’ve done int the week that’s been and gone . .

Sunday was spent walking Blue and then heading over to electrik bar in Chorlton for a most enjoyable night of Sundays 1 Deck Session where the DJ on the deck that night was the wonderfully moustached Andrew Weatherall . . . and boy what a moustache he has . .

Over the course of the evening he played everything from Rockabilly, the Clash, the specials and just about anything else that took his fancy, thoroughly nice man and thoroughly good entertainment was had by all who attended, these 1 Deck sessions at electrik just get better.

Should also point you towards @undeleted’s Blog were you can find a much better write up of the evening and who is the man responsible for this pioneering new camera interview technique “The Chest and Chin”

Monday through to Wednesday weren’t all that exciting just the usual drudgery of work and wondering if we’d be hit by another white out with the snow, the only highlights were watching the new series of Survivors starting on the BBC, which gave me and no doubt a few other dotted around Manchester the opportunity to play spot the Mancunian location, the most obvious was the exterior of the Midland Hotel, where they took Tom to operate on, didn’t recognise anywhere else, but that’s probably down to the fact the BBC have moved production of the new series to Birmingham, so expect to see local shots around there in the coming episodes.

Also spent some time uploading a few more videos onto YouTube . .  yes and they were of the dog Blue, but do you blame me, she is after all the prettiest dog in the world

First up in her new video adventures is the quilt sucking episode, it seems that when you leave Blue alone in the bedroom she has a habit of bunching up the quilt and grabbing it in her jaws and just  “Sucking”

She treats it like its some sort of security blanket or something, anyway here’s the proof and just check out the so serious face when she clocks the camera filming her

Next up there’s Blue enjoying the summer in Longford Park, filmed this earlier on last year, but just never got around to uploading it

Then came Thursday and today, not much to blog about I’m afraid.

As for tomorrow there might be more to blog about, as I’ve instituted #DogClub on Twitter and will hopefully have a few peeps joining me and Blue on our Saturday morning walk around Ivy Green, though this might change to another location as yet undecided.

Also I must say hello to Adrian or to his friends Eddy Layton, who I’ve recently discovered reads my blog from time to time, so Eddy if your reading this say hello to my mum next time you see her and say hello Mrs L and Paul for me.

Had a problem with my 3g iphone 3g today, had been using it over lunch and after sending a text message had locked the screen, a few minutes later felt it vibrate to let me know a new message had come in, so went to unlock the screen and was presented with just a black screen displaying only the signal strength-date-time-battery life and nothing else.

Thought at first I’d broken it, I tried pressing the sleep/wake button on the front of the phone, but this didn’t change anything next I tried pressing the lock button again to no avail, so there I am with a blank / black screen on my iphone thinking its now completely buggered, with no access to a computer that I could reset it on either.

Anyway being the UberGeek I am I don’t take defeat sitting down, so got on a PC and googled the iphone’s symptoms and came across this fix (see below), well its actually a iphone reset,which thankfully worked, so now I am no longer blank/black screened J

So if the same happens

Just follow this easy guide and your screen can be revived !

Press and hold down the Sleep/Wake button and Home button at the same time for a least 10-15 seconds. This will cause the screen to clear out and then it should display the Apple Logo on the black background.

Once the Apple logo appears it means that the reset is complete and the iphone will restart and your back in touch with the online world . . simple as

On the way to work this morning Barton Road in Stretford was cordoned off just before the Robin Hood Pub, my first thoughts were that there’s been a crash of some sort, but as I continued to work there was a report on the BBC News that a 16yr old boy had been shoot outside the pub in the late evening of Sunday.

Seems that the young lad had been with friends at a music event at the pub and as he was leaving in a car with a group of friends the car they were all travelling in was shoot up by someone, out of the four in the car he was apparently hit in the head and later died in Trafford Hospital.

Just when you think you know somewhere you discover that its not as safe as you first thought, I know Stretfords pretty crap, but I never thought there’d be drivebys on its streets, thoughts go out to this lads family and to any family effected by gun crime, Police initially arrested 3 people in connection with the shooting, but have released 2 and keeping the other for further questioning, I’m guessing the 3 arrested were the people in the car with him and there just going through the process of questioning them and figuring out whats gone on.

Its bullshit that people have to resort to guns to sort out differences, that such young life’s have to be wasted because there members of the wrong gang or in the wrong place, just hoping that the Police can find out who did it and get another killer off the streets, but as one goes to jail there will always be another waiting to take there place.

A very sad state of affairs our worlds coming to . .   and people wonder why I don’t want to bring children into this world . .

Seems I’m spending more time on Twitter then I have been on my Blog of late, so here I am back to update you all on whats been happening in the world of Vince.

Bank Holiday Weekend:

Spent most of the holiday weekend in the company of Mel, Blue our dog, John and Sophie, introduced them both to Pi-chorlton and the delectable PIE they sell, me and John went for the Mooo PIE while Mel and Sophie went all cheesy on us and had the Heidi PIE, think they both will be visiting that fine establishment again from the comments they made about the tasty PIE.

Also popped into Electriks for a few beers where Blue got plenty of admiring glances and pets on the head.

Saturday we met up with Bernie, Lisa, Andrew, Paul, Rik, Kev and Riks missus Clare I think, introduced them to Electriks fine beers and free Jukebox, though we couldn’t stay to long as we’d been out most of the day drinking and were fairly pissed fairly early so headed home around 9:30pm, Sunday and Monday was spent relaxing watching movies at home.

As for today, well I’ve just dropped my car off at BMTec for its annual MOT and hopefully after a few fixes to a leaking front shock absorber, a faulty parking brake and a few knackered lights it should pass, though might be a tad more expensive then I’d hoped, will now how much around about 3:00pm today.

On about Twitter . . . I now have 76 followers, so slowly but surely I’m getting a nice set of people following me and I in turn follow them, seems quite a few are dog owners like myself and its nice to know our Cane Corso Blues getting more fans, seems where ever I out something about her on the Internet she attracts attention, but hey shes a pretty princess so its to be expected lol

Anyway gonna shoot now and catch up on some TV i’ve missed, got about 4 episodes of The Fringe to watch and the whole of Series 3 of The Wire, looking forward to The Wire especially as this series there on the trail of the Avon Barksdale gang again.

Nearly forgot I’m also using AudioBoo now so check out the AudioBoos in the menu at the top right to here my lovely voice lol

Well apart from Blue, yeah poor Vince is holding down the fort while Mel’s having a girls night in Blackpool with her sister, I was hoping to have a lad’s night, but it seems most of them are in the Lakes at either Phil’s or Ben’s caravan, so what is Vince going to do with himself today ?

Thus far I’ve done Blues morning walk round Ivy Green, i’ve managed a Supreme Breakfast at Orlando’s and now I’m sat in Electrik’s having a nice cold Hoeggarden and watching the world of Chorlton slowly go by, actually thought there’d be more people out and about today, but’s it fairly quiet round here, not many people in the bar, guessing there all outside somewere enjoying the sun.

Tried ringing Ben and John to see if the’d care to join me, but Ben’s got plans at the moment and as for John he’s still in bed recvering from last nights excess’s after the Prodigy gig, no doubt he and Sophie went overboard and probably did’nt get to bed till stupid o’clock this morning, I’ll try giving him a call later and see if he’s up for drink or 2 tonight.

Anyway while I was at Orando’s had a quick chat with Rupert who’s given me the heads up about his next little project, can’t really say much at the moment, but watch this space, for when the time comes I shall divulge more.

Best get back to people watching and drinking my Hoeggarden before it gets to warm and the sun disappears.

Laters

Well got another email from some of my friends in Nigeria letting me know once again that I could be in for a nice windfall of money, this time however no-ones died and left it to me, something I’m quite happy about as it’s not nice toreceive money because someones died.

So if no-ones died where’s the money come from, well it appears that some   was destined to be paid to me as part of a contract award was in a bank for a long time and it acquired a hefty amount of interest while it was in there and the nice Bank Manager thinks that I should get it as he thought it unfair that Ididn’t get the contract, so he’s decided to give it to me, isn’t that sweet.

Anyway heres his nice letter in its entirity, notice the excellent grammer and construction of the letter, its hard to believe that English is his first language . .

International Remittance Dept
HSBC Bank plc
8 Canada Square
London E14 5HQ

Mr Parry Jones
Int’l Remittance Director
Hsbc Bank London
Tel: +447024076241

Oh how these Nigerians make me laugh with there promises of money, why should I a rich westerner need such money when the street over here are paved with

Who might be coming back I hear you scream . . .

Well the MD might be coming back early from his holidays, seems a member of his family has unluckily broken thier leg in 2 places, which is pretty bad really, but it means he may be calling his holiday short and returning to work, so its also unlucky for us, we were looking forward to a week without him, its a sort of holiday for us as well.

Thinking about it though he’ll probably rebook and take the holiday again in the near future so we still might be lucky enough to have some time without him.

In other news I seem to be increasing my Twitter following, I’ve now got 12 followers who have subscribed to my Twitterings, this is an increase of 9 since last week, been chatting to a few of them online, seems this is another way to meet new friends from around the world, you should give it a go, other thing thats good about it is the amount of links that people twitter, I’ve come across news and websites I don’t think I’d have heard or found of myself.

Well it seems my mate Pete (aka cocopoppete) who now lives Australia is coming back to England in May, he’s lived there for nearly 10 years and due to this I don’t get to see him very often, I actually quite miss him, especially the times when we and the lads used to go to the bingo of a Thursday night - even though Pete has left these shores for a sunnier climate we still get to have the odd game of bingo together, how do we do this you ask ?

Well since Pete ( aka cocopoppete) has been gone the internet has grown up and evolved into something much more, just about everything you could do in the the real world you can now be done online and now thanks to online bingo sites we can spend our Thursday nights (in England) and Friday Mornings (in Australia) playing online bingo, it’s just like we used to do when he was here still living in England.

God bless the internet, God bless online bingo and God bless cocopoppete

That’s all I have to suffer before I’m off for the New Year, but god is it suffering today, due to a problem with my MD re: System Administrators god given right to go on other users PC’s when there not in to do system maintenance on their PC’s (He’s said we can’t do that as there might be users private information on the PC’s, there company PC’s there should’nt be), I’m having to spend the day doing the accounts filing as there’s not much in the way I can do with regards IT if I are’nt allowed on peoples PC’s.

You know you could’nt make this sort of thing up, every month there’s something more ridiculous that you either have to do or you are’nt allowed to do, it’s like being in Prison but with some sort of surreal OCD suffering Governor in charge, just got to hold out until the spring and pray the job market is picking up and then start looking in ernest for another job, preferably one where they actually let you do your joB.

Anyway enough ranting about work for the moment as there’s more important things to rant about . .  like the daily papers in the UK :

Today’s tabloid headlines have mostly been about Liverpool Captain Steven Gerrard who apparently got into a ruckus in a bar/club last night and ended up spending part of the evening in a Police station, now I’m sure somewhere that is important news, but what about maybe instead of sticking a celebrity on the front page and highlighting their plight the papers actually did something different for a change and maybe tried to raise people awareness of whats actually happening in the real world  . .  say for instance the Gaza Strip, where at this moment the whole might of the Israeli Army is poised to enter the Gaza Strip in war, or how about celebrating the fact that the killers of Craig Brown a 2oyr old father killed on Christmas eve have been apprehended.

It shames me sometimes to read papers, the majority of todays papers are bowing down to peoples fascination with celebrity and giving up about 1/2 of there pages to stories about how such and such celebrity had a boob job, or someone who slept with another celebrity while doing a backwards handstand (ok that ones not true, but it might as well be).

Bring back proper papers that tell proper stories . .

I’m guessing that I’m not the only person in the world this week who’s been trying to figure out what there going to get their work colleagues in the Secret Santa, I finally got around to getting mine and bringing it into work today after spending the best part of a week deciding what to get my Secret Santa.

First thing I wanted to get was one of these

This would have been ideal as he sometimes has a case of verbal diarrhea, but alas you cant get one of these for the statutory £5  your only allowed to spend on the present.

Anyway after much thinking I managed to get hold of something that is hopefully funny and useful to this person, just hoping he likes Hot Curries otherwise he won’t be able to use them.

Wonder what I’ll get this year, previous years I’ve received a Coughing Ashtray, a imitation Zippo Lighter, a Laughing Bottle Opener, a Book on how to have Calm Thoughts and the rest I can’t remember, but alas they’ve all been consigned to either the bin or some cardboard box in the garden shed, guessing most of the things I’ve sent have gone to similar homes after the buzz of Christmas was over.