>I must apologise to both of my loyal readers about my tragic lack of postings this month. To be honest, I have not been in the mood to create witty and imaginative writings – I have felt a crushing weight of depression recently and there is no real outlet for it – hence, no blog updates.

The main reason for this post is to make sure that there is an entry in the Blogger archives for March 2005. I wouldn’t want future generations to click on my March 2005 archive link and have nothing to read. No sense making everyone else unhappy too, eh?

In anticipation of renewed enthusiasm in April,

I remain,

Your semi-regular correspondent.

—End transmission—

>Presently, there are a few blogs playing a game of interviewing one another and posting the results. The hottest hornbag this side of Fountain Lakes has posed a couple of questions to me and I present for you, my answers. Read on and gain a modicum of insight into what makes me tick:

1. Why don’t you update your blog as often as you should?
   An interesting question and one which I have often asked myself. The short answer is that I am a combined slack-arse and busy person. I trip along happily on the road to Hell (paved with good intentions) and start the day / week / month with the intention to be a regular blogger. The trouble is that I either get overwhelmed by work or my mind tends to go blank when confronted with the Create Post window. Rather annoying since (in English at least) I am rarely lost for words. Rather ironically, you posted this question as I was actually writing a post. Coincidence or irony – let’s ask Alannis.
2. Do you really go to work everyday or are you out partying between 7&7 as I have always suspected?
   The fun just never stops for me during the ungodly 7am to 7pm drudgery. If you think that the 3 hour Schwyyzer Düütsch meetings and the persistent shifting of deadlines and delivery dates (both to and from) is the non-stop party it sounds like – I will swap with you. Having said that, the role reversal option is not one that I relish and I suspect that it is not something that you would be down with either. Maybe we should realise that we both have pretty hard jobs. I know that the Lifestyles of the Rich and the Famous are not exactly banging your door down to showcase your extravagant and luxurious daily activities, but God knows we all appreciate it. Lovin’ your work dear. Let’s keep the arrangement as it stands – I’ll bring home the bacon and you fry it up into the sangas.
3. If you could choose one xtreem sport to excel in, what would it be?
   I reckon that if there was any xtreem sport that I would choose, it would have to be a maddog skateboarder. But not one of those dorks that you see with his wallet chained to his pants failing to land a single Ollie mind you – they suck whilst I rock! The reason for this is that I am an absolute gimp when it comes to skateboarding – I am like a burning spastic whenever I stand on one of these things. When I see those ramp gods thrashing it out on the vert ramp at the X Games, I would love to be able to do that (I know you have a bit of a thing for the Hawkster – and maybe I have too).
   
4. Why me? Achtung: SAP Alert!!!
   See that’s an easy one. You are the best thing that ever happened to me and I know that you were the one from the moment we met. Even though I let you tell people that I was conned into marrying you, what am I – a complete dork? Of course I wanted it to happen. I guess that the answer to a question like this could go on for ever; you are beautiful, funny, intelligent, my best friend, a great mother (though thankfully not yet a grand one) and soooo damn sexy. Where else am I going to find someone who makes Mince and Tatties in 3 pots to accomodate all of our differing preferences? Enough said – you are the one for me and always will be. After all, the only thing I can offer you is total and utter dependence.
5. What is your honest opinion of my favourite movie, Out of Sight?
   Another interesting question, yet utterly irrelevant to the readers out there. But I will tell you what I think: I love the blokey bits in Lompoc with Snoopy Miller and Glen Michaels etc. At the same time I would have to be dead inside to not see the chemistry between Gary and Celeste…although I do find Buddy to be a bit annoying and I absolutley love Adele. Honourable mention to Ray Nicolette too – his gormlessness is hilarious. All in all, a movie that I give two thumbs up.

So there you have it ladies and germs, a small taste of the wonder of me. For you first-timers, just take it in small bites…there is a lot to digest.

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>Is there a more annoying element to blogging than the endless number of great, money-spinning ideas that people come up with? For many people, the whole point of writing a blog is to have it read…but once your wife and friends have read it, what’s left? This is the void that was filled by the traffic generating sites like Blog Explosion, Blog Clicker et al. No problem with anything so far but…I was just checking in at a friends blog and saw this comment that someone left with one of his posts:

Quick Question:

If you don’t want anyone to know who you are, and your friends know who you are, then why send traffic to it?

Afterall, your friends must have it bookmarked right!

I myself, like to know have a feel for who you are, or I won’t even bother
reading your blog. IMO

Robert
Robert | Homepage | 02.26.05 – 9:02 pm

To clarify, this intrepid blogger had run into trouble with his previous blog because some people found it and weren’t happy with some of the content…an all to common occurrence these days. So he came up with a new, anonymous arrangement that is suiting the rest of us down to the ground. That is except for Robert. Now I can hear you both saying “who the fuck is Robert and why does his opinion count?”

Turns out he isn’t anyone and it doesn’t, but he is affiliated with a traffic exchange program called Mystical Maze Hit Exchange and they are running some kind of system where you click links and view blogs and blah blah blah – ho hum – all been done before. When you go into their system, your blog gets wrapped in their maze and links business but you also serve out some banner advertising from their sponsors and that pisses me off.

Besides, who clicks on banner ads? I am sorry to say to any friends of mine that may have banner ads – I never click through on any of them – I am a complete internet cheapskate. Commercialism has ruined the internet for me – that’s what was so good about the recent explosion of blogging- no ads and no commercial sites. A small Google sidebar ad or something doesn’t bother me but I object to banners being served to pages that I am surfing through.

I cannot see why anyone using the web as recreation tool should need ads on their page. When I come to your blog, it is sort of like I came over to your house and we had a chat (that’s how I see most people’s blogging activities – you may disagree). Now if I came to your house, would you start the conversation by informing me of some great deals available at blah- blah.com ? Of course not, you don’t have visitors to your house so you can earn $0.10 per visit / click through. Same rules apply to personal pages like blogs!

Of course, I don’t have to click on the banners, I don’t have to wait for the page to load and I can choose to ignore the banner…all valid suggestions. But FFS, there is a principle at stake here, and I actually like to rant now and then.

Now if you’re thinking that I have spoken a big ole bunch of crap (and you might be right) – check this out:

• Today there are 6’512 members of the Mystical Maze and the total cash paid out to members is $4’797 to date.

Impressive numbers, I just might sign up myself – do any of you have any suggestions as to what I can buy with my projected average earning of $0.73 ????

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>Just listening to Franz Ferdinand at the moment and it suddenly struck me that there seems to be an awfully large emotional investment in these guys on the part of Scotland. Through Sky, our BBC and ITV choices are from Scotland so we see Scottish news and programming and the amount of exposure that they receive is astonishing and is inevitably going to lead to over-exposure. Particularly from the Glasgow Art Wank scene.

Don’t get me wrong, I think that they are one of the best bands around at the moment and I love their music. It just strikes me that they are being heralded as a Scottish phenomenon. A phenomenon which is being embraced by those yearning to shed the traditional Scottish Inferiority Complex.

In Trainspotting, Rents summed it up so well when he said, “I hate being Scottish. We’re the lowest of the fucking low, the scum of the earth, the most wretched, servile, miserable, pathetic trash that was ever shat into civilization. Some people hate the English, but I don’t. They’re just wankers. We, on the other hand, are colonized by wankers. We can’t even pick a decent culture to be colonized by. We are ruled by effete arseholes.”

I think that the need to be recognised as having some value to the world is no longer necessary for Scotland, they would do well just to get on with it. There’s unemployment, disenfranchisement and a general malaise in every society. The desperate clinging to Franz Ferdinand as a symbol of worth for some people in Scotland appears to this outsider as rather an onerous burden on four guys who just happen to have been to art college in Glasgow.

Smacks a little of the drowning man clinging to his rescuer so tightly, that he ends up drowning them both.

>

Love you the most baby
xxxxx

>…tried to download Windows XP Service Pack 2 without using Windows Update? Well I have and believe me, if you think you can get it from Micro$oft, you are better at this interpants thing than me!

I did find it, but not anywhere near that crappy Windows Update site. I had to use IE to get into that for a start ( and we all know that Firefox is the King of Browsers), so that had me pissed off from the start. Coupled with the fact that M$ wants total control of your updating experience, it gave me a bit of a run around. I just gave up and ended up downloading it from here. It seems to work just the same and the consistent 252KB/s download speed is nice too. Especially since the file is 266MB!!!

So that is all for now. Feel free to comment, I am using the new Blogger comments system and making an assessment about changing to Haloscan or not.

Gotta go, the D/L is finished.

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>

>Hi Everyone,

Sorry about the lack of posts. I have been exceedingly busy and will be posting some new thoughts in the next couple of days. Unfortunatley, I am caught up in some crazy new “work for your pay” scheme that they have going on at my company. I ask you, how much can a koala bear?

Here is something very quick though. As you know, I am desperately in NEED of some sort of minituarised, computerised MP3 playing contraption (read iPod). This need has made me acutley aware of the “personal” stereo choices of my fellow Pendler (commuters in German) and I have two questions:

1. If it is a “personal” stereo why have I got to hear every bit of your “music” as well? I know that sounds so elderly but come on people. You listen to your music and I’ll listen to mine (or imagine that I am).
2. If those huge fucking headphones that you insist on wearing are too heavy for your ears, don’t you think that putting them around your neck and then playing the stereo so the whole train can hear it is pushing the threads of our already tenuous relationship a little too far? And while I am on those headphones, the guy from the Bomfunk MCs “Freestyler” video had discreet ones compared to some of the monstrosities going around Kanton Zurich at the moment. They are just ridic man! Plain ridic!

Bis nächstes Mal meine Freunde,

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>Hey,

Just did a totally lame quiz from someone else’s blog about Killer Robots. Not that good but at least I got to be my fave robot…

Which Colossal Death Robot Are You?

Who is coming up with these things?

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>Today, this blog achieved a milestone of having 1’000 visitors. I feel that credit must go to the gorgeously straight-haired ms. mac, whose injection of 100 Blog Clicker credits may have helped pushed me over the edge.

Interestingly, she just passed the momentous 10’000 mark. That means she’s had 10 times as many visitors as me. I think she might have written 100 times more posts, so I guess I am doing ok with my paltry offerings.

ps. That is a post a day for two days in a row. Is that some kind of record?

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