chrisg.org

Wow, it has been a while since I did this!

Why have I been away so long?

It took longer to settle into our new house than expected, then work got *extremely* stressed with deadlines and workload. When we finally got a phone line installed I just didn’t have the energy or inclination to even look at a computer in my spare time.

As well as our home situtation, reaction to this journal has been a little … odd ..

This has made me have good long hard think about my web site. Todays journal entry will be the last in this incarnation, in future I will be merging the thoughts, news on the front page and my journal into one section, fulfilling those functions (kind of). Passwords may also be used, so I can restrict who gets to see what.

Expect some changes to chrisg.com, but not too soon! :O)

My computer is out of its box, so I guess we have officially moved in.

We don’t have a telephone connection, so I am still having to borrow internet access for the time being.

I had a strange feeling unpacking my pc, kind of like on Blue Peter (sad kids tv show) when they would get the tortoise out of hybernation :O)

The cats seem very pleased to be out of the cattery. As we are living on a building site, they are not allowed out of the house, but at present they don’t seem to mind.

While 90% of our belongings have been transferred to our new home, I haven’t really spent much time there. I am hoping pretty soon my work panic will subside and I will be able to start working my normal hours.

My experiments with getting chrisg.com to the top of the search engine results is not proving very successful. If you do a search for “Chris Garrett” my site appears between 7th placing and no placing at all. Ok, so it’s not that important, but I am supposed to be able to do this stuff! I put it down partly to the shabby QuickDomains web forwarding frameset, but none of the other Chris Garretts sites do anything fancy (other than say “Chris Garrett” repeatedly). The top placed site doesn’t even have keywords and description tags. Humph.

For anyone who remembers the 80s fondly, we watched an excellent tv show tonight – Hunting Venus. It was a feature length comedy, featuring Martin Clunes and Neil Morrissey of Men Behaving Badly fame. Excellent stuff, I am sure it will be shown in other countries and repeated here, so don’t miss it.

We haven’t been bowling or been to the cinema in ages. I don’t even know if there is any films out worth watching. I am too tired to go to the quiz night. What a sad state of affairs. Damian and I used to go every sunday without fail. Now it is more like once every six months. Moving closer to our friends and family should *improve* our social life!

My fitness level has been bothering me of late, inevitably my thoughts turned to going swimming with Col. There are obvious benefits, swimming is excellent for all-round health and fitness, and guaranteed weekly bath , but also it would be a change, something out of the ordinary. It may seem a very ordinary thing to do to anyone else, but the only time I swim is on holiday. Yes, Kung Fu is excellent exercise, but swimming seems more of a leisure activity – not as much hard work.

Looking at my logfile today, I started wondering where all my visitors are coming from. Anyone who has looked in detail at my site will see I record “referrer” information, that is the site that a visitor linked from, but not all hits register a referrer, and sometimes the referrer was someones mailbox. My list of jokes seems a popular page, which I guess is an obvious draw, but many people seem to view my homepage, about and some pictures, then surf on.

If you have a spare couple of seconds, could you please sign my guestbook or drop me a message to say how you found me? Ta :O)

Today was moving day, and what a moving day it was!

From 8:00am to 11:pm we were shifting boxes and bags. I can’t believe how much stuff we have got. Our possessions are now spread between

– 1 dining room

– 1 conservatory

– 2 garages

– 4 bedrooms

It’s a miracle we got it done. Between six of us we had to make three trips in the van, use three cars, and to make things just that little bit more difficult, we had to do all this in a foot of snow, hale, rain or whatever else it could throw at us.

But we moved.

And we have to do it all again in two weeks time when our house is finished.

I nearly forgot Red Dwarf was on tonight, just shows how busy we are! Got in and the video set up just in time.

Things are getting pretty scary on the house front. We have to move out and our keys have to be in the estate agents letter box by midnight Tuesday the 9th at the latest. So as of next tuesday we are pretty much homeless, I hope our new house doesn’t fall through.

My latest magazine article is out. It has been pretty well received if my email inbox is anything to go by. People *really* seem to enjoy Internet Works.

I would like to do more articles, but the editor says he has loads of articles already, so I am kinda on standby. Although there is nothing to stop me taking my ideas elsewhere ..

This morning I got in to find an email telling me “You suck”. It was a message sent to me by my website to tell me someone had added a guestbook message.

It seems some people think it is clever to leave (ho ho ho) “comedy” messages on my guestbook. Do they think I am going to leave a badly spelled insult on my website for all to see? People who do this obviously don’t have the intelligence to know I actually read what people put up there and have their machines IP Address and Host Name, so each message is ‘traceable’.

I don’t really care what people say on my guestbook, I just delete the immature stuff, but several people have noted the lack of email links on this site. Sorry and all that, but it’s the only way to prevent spam. There is a message facility in “You To Me” where you can send simple text messages, *if* I reply *then* you will get my email address. *If* I reply.

Once the Internet seemed like it was inhabited by intelligent, witty, kind people.

Like you and me ;O)

Two downers today :O(

Downer 1)

Netbenefit have sent me a invoice for two more years domain name fees for my company that hasn’t existed for months. £80! £50 of which is “administration fees”, I *know* there isn’t £50 of work there, greedy b’st’rds. When I called to complain the snotty bloke on the other end of the line said “don’t pay it”. Yeah, right. They know my credit card details, I ain’t leaving it at that.

Downer 2)

A really good coffee usually cheers me up. We have good coffee at work, but we don’t have a filter machine, just cafetieres and I don’t like the floaty bits you get.

We have a nice coffee takeaway place (Pret a mange) near work, and as I had mistakenly brought a frozen meal that requires a grill (d’oh) I thought I would go get a McDonalds Italiano burger and a nice mocha coffee. As usual Ann placed an order for a mocha too.

Pret give you takeout in paper bags. Why I didn’t use my McDonalds tray that I keep in the car for just these occasions I don’t know. As I went round the roundabout at 40mph the bag with the coffees in fell over. I thinks to myself “I’ll be clever, I’ll stop that happening again by placing the bag between my legs”. I picked up the coffee bag and poured hot coffee all over my car seats, all over my coat and all down my legs, while still hammering along at 40.

So … no coffee … boiling hot liquid down my sensitive parts … a stained, sticky car seat …

…. but at least my car smells a bit nicer ;O)

“The Buyer” was round today with his mum measuring for curtains and carpets, etc. Good job he took his mum along, he didn’t have a clue.

He’s not going to budge on having us out of the house. Our house isn’t going to be ready until three weeks after he wants to move in, so that means three weeks with the inlaws. Git.

It’s not just we are going to have to stay with Clares Mum and Dad that’s p*ssing me off, we are going to have to move house *twice*, have the cats vaccinated so they can stop in a cattery (the cattery fees on their own aren’t cheap) and we will have our belongings spread over lots of kind folks houses instead of one convenient place.

B@st*rd!

We were supposed to go through to see Simon and Julie, but we are much too p*ssed off to have a good time, Clare especially. Rearranged for next weekend.

Clare has a stinker of a cold any way, and it pelted it down with snow on the way home anyway, so maybe it was for best we rearranged.

Instead of seeing Simon and Jules we called in at Nigel and Traceys, who I have started calling our “therapists”. Whenever we are down we seem to end up either at McDonalds drivethru or Nigel and Traceys. We had a good old chat and bitched about the world and felt much better.

As I said above, the weather on the way home was horrendous, hope it’s better for work in the morning.