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Latest News and Blog Posts from Wayne “Pendragon” Owens.
Work: The End Is here
Well today is Plaetpete’s last day in the office.
So far we have spent most the morning moving furniture around the building, but are yet to discover where he has dug his escape tunnel.
Well I think the company will miss him, as the git has packed up most the fun and insanity and is taking it with him. So the place will be a less enjoyable building.
Ok, truth be known. We’ll miss Jeff the Wonder Dog!!
But in a rare moment of seriousness..
Jesus Christ – Vampire Hunter
Last night I watched a very weird film, in fact when I spotted the film mentioned I thought it had to be a mistake. What was that film?
“Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter”
I suppose the name should have said it all really!
It is classified as a “Kung-Fu Action / Comedy / Horror / Musical about the second coming”. What is not to love with that classification?
But It turned out to be Bad! in fact is was so BAD, it was good. :0)
Well any movie to have a kung-Fu fighting Christ, Punk Priests, Vampires, Mad scientists, Masked Mexican Wrestlers, Lesbians, Musical numbers and such has to be good.
It brought back memories of my university days, and getting very, very drunk on a Saturday night. Then back to beasts place to watch the Troma films that Sky tended to show at ungodly hours of the morning. Before heading home.
Anyway..
It is well worth a watch if you ever see a copy somewhere…
Petition Time
The proposed ban on the import, sale and manufacture of swords will have an adverse effect on legitimate practitioners, collectors and manufacturers.
Actual sword related crime is very rare and does not warrant a ban that affects the cultural activities of thousands of legitimate martial artists, collectors and smiths. Current legislation is quite adequate to deal with violent crime connected with bladed weapons. New legislation is merely for show. Enforcing such a ban will also affect cultural events such as Scottish Sword Dancing and many Sikh festivals.
We urge the PM to reconsider this knee jerk reaction to media influenced scaremongering.
http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/swords/
Please sign up. (Not that the government ever listen to the people, but its worth a try!!) And let us insane MA types keep access to our training tools.
There Can Be Only One!
Unless you are the Highlander, and suffer from an endless stream of sequels!
Here we go: –
Highlander 1:
Was a film that stood on its own as a decent film, in so much that it had a plot, followed a time line, and made sense. Not to mention the file was fantastic, and featured an amazing soundtrack.
Highlander 2:
Decided to ignore the beginning of the first film, where the main character grew up and met the others for the first time. Instead it made them all aliens, who all know each other on another planet, before being sentenced to be exiled to Earth. They just happened to forget they knew each other in the first film.
Highlander 3:
Now we realise the second film made no sense at all. So lets forget it completely and continue from the end of the first film, as if the second never happened. Lets bring in a bit of magic to help explain immortals instead of “Space Aliens” and continue along the original lines.
Highlander 4:
Ok, we have a problem. We killed off everyone bar the highlander, but we have created two TV spin offs we have to explain. This is a bit tricky, since they have a lot of immortals in the shows, and all the immortals were killed off in the films. Not a problem, hardly an inconvenience! Lets follow the famous dynasty story line. “It was all a dream”, We will jump back in time to about half way through the first film and make everything from there on a dream the highlander had. That should do it.
Highlander 5:
Right lets make a new film to right the wrongs of earlier ones. We’ll throw in all the popular characters from the TV series (apart from the Raven). Set it at some near future date, have a powerful but insane bad guy, let the sword be broken (again making the so called Scotsman go from using a Japanese style sword to some Chinese swords). We will change the whole reason behind the immortality again, but to appease the fans we will throw in some queen tracks from the original.
Highlander 6:
I think it is safe to say now, that everyone has realised our writers are all heavily into drug use. So let us do an animated film. We will set it 100s of years into the future, with mutants and cyborgs and every other sci-fi trope we can think of. Oh and bring Conner back from the dead for the X time. (who even knows how many times by now)
FCMA: A Good nights Training
Well tonight’s training session was one of the best I’ve had for a long time.
We did not do as much training as normal, but I got to work with a couple of the black belts, and I think that makes all the difference.
Going through my grade work with a senior grade has the advantage that I get advice, tips, and suggestions.
You also get pressure tested a bit more with the black belts, you get slight injuries, and are forced to train a bit harder and faster. Which is a great way to advance yourself!
Plagiarising the Poet – I’m mad, bad and dangerous to know.
Well to take my mind off the drudgery of dealing with some stupid people.
“Are you sure you want your domain name redirected there? You know that doesn’t exist so your site won’t work? No my redirecting it will not magically make the other place exist?” All the while resisting buying the none-existent domain name to sell to the customer at a later date…
I was doing some random google searches on some poetry I wrote years ago. And blow me down with a feather I found loads of copies of them about the net.
Ok 85% of the found copies were people posting them as their own work, Now in the past this has annoyed me, and I’ve asked for them to be removed, but due to a mellowing out in my old age, I couldn’t care less anymore..
Either that or the fact that all the comments on the poems were complimentary, eased the pain :0)
Or the fact I found one professional (non-personal) site that had one of my poems on it listed as being by Lord Byron (1812).
So kind of a decent compliment for people to mistake my work for that of Lord Byron!…
It is 14th Century Japan!
Well I bravely battled the winds, the rain, the fallen trees, closed roads, and other dangers to make it to the dojo for training last night.
Well, I braved all that after leaving the office early (Well tis hard to work in IT with no power) to get to PlanetPete‘s to play “Age of Empires II” then on to training. Where we did fun stuff which I can not mention on an open forum. :0)
Alas being the highest rank there I was used as the Instructors demonstration partner (Forcing my mind to wake up fast to keep up with what’s was going on).
Anyway I digress…
After training I head back home, looking forward to a quick shower, coffee, some warm food and a chill out in front the TV. Only to get home to no electricity, in fact it’d been off so long even the stuff with battery backups had failed..
So Had to train, then have cold drink (which was not so bad as I found a stash of can’s) some biscuits (The only food I could find that did not require cooking) then sitting about in candle light! well that and the light from the laptop that I was using to watch a film!
Its actually very atmospheric watching a dark horror film in the dark with just the flickering light from candles…
What was that noise?
The Commute to Work? OR A daily Adventure?
Well for once the BBC weather service got it correct.
They said the morning’s commute traffic may be affected by the heavy storms, and it was!
I left the house this morning as normal, started driving down the hill. I was thinking it was wet, it was wetter, there was an inch of water running down the hill, a couple of inches, I’m driving down a river…. Argggghhhh!!!
The river then ended in a nice lake, hiding the road, the banks, the ditch’s, the works. It was then I started thinking it was a good job i had a 4×4.
Then several Lakes later, including a fun one with a sports car stuck in the middle of it, I was hating the 4×4 without which I could have worked from home.
But, It was a fun drive into the office, floods, big trees blocking roads, It beats commuting down motorways the morning drive of over welsh mountains, across moors, through mountain passes, countryside all the way…
Anyway… Work to be done… Coffee to be Drunk!
The Straw is Speedily Approaching The Camel
You have to wonder about some people, and their problem solving abilities..
I work for an ISP, and our current main support person is off work with stress, and has been for over a month. The director in charge of support has also decided he has had enough and is no longer doing support. So we are down two full time support people.
So what do the powers that be do? hire NEW support people?
…….NO
Outsource our support to another country/company?
…….NO!!
They decide to give the support roles to the people in my office, who are 1 system Admin, 2 Full time developers, and 1 part time developer. So as well as our normal stressful, rush work that fills up 8 hours a day in the office, we now have to cover an extra 16 hours a day work (which is apparently so STRESSFUL our current support guy is off Ill)
Now am I alone in thinking that if a job is so stressful it makes people Ill, that giving it to someone already in a stressful job is a bit silly?
Oh, and the best bit dear reader. Guess what bonus/extra we are getting for covering 2 peoples work..
A pay rise?
………No
More Holidays?
………No
Fuck All!!!
But I should not complain, as in December I was doing My job, Helping Covering Support Roles, Helping Out other departments, And covering the SysAdmins job fixing/repairing Servers.. I got given a extra cash Christmas bonus of 50quid… Woooo Hooooo
Well the CV is under a re-write… Hopefully it will be done before that bit of floating straw lands on the camels back, and I do something silly…..
pointed out this morning that we really should have a medical note preventing us being put under too much stress due to hobbies of playing with dangerous weapons..
Anyway.. here ends my break so back to work and hopefully someone will invent the time machine allowing me to do that 12 hours work a day in the normal 9-5 office hours.
…………………………And relax
The Year That Was – 2006
Its that time of year again.
Where I look back over the previous year and answer the same 40 questions.
1. What did you do in 2006 that you’d never done before?
OK, New things :-
- Went to a fancy do at a gentleman’s club.
- Started training in the art of the technoshaman.
- Joined the Freemasons.
- Visited Spain.
2. Did you keep your new years’ resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
Well I partially kept some of them, and totally ignored others. But I intend to do better in 2007.
3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
Yes. Congratulations Suz.
4. Did anyone close to you die?
Yes. My Nian. (Grandmother) Gone but not forgotten.
5. What countries did you visit?
England, Wales, & Spain.
6. What would you like to have in 2007 that you lacked in 2006?
A decent Wage, An aim in life, a long term relationship, a gun!
7. What dates from 2006 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
15th September, when we got the phone call while on holiday in Spain that my grandmother had passed away.
8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
- Winning the 1st FCMA student of the month award.
- Being invited to a movie premier.
- Being age checked for buying alcohol in a supermarket,
Gods I need a more exciting life.
9. What was your biggest failure?
Failing my New Years Resolutions.
10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Just continuations of last years injuries, and variations there on.
11. What was the best thing you bought?
Laptop & PDA So I can be a mobile Geek :0)
12. Whose behaviour merited celebration?
Me!! for resisting taking revenge!
13. Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed?
My aunt. Who stole my Grandmothers house to spite her dead father, and then tried blackmailing her seriously ill sister.
14. Where did most of your money go?
Dojo Fee’s, Petrol, DVD’s, Books.
15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Nothing. Its been a long time since I got really excited about anything.
16. What song will always remind you of 2006?
Pump It! by the Black Eyed Peas!
17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
- a) happier or sadder? Same
- b) thinner or fatter? fatter
- c) richer or poorer? Richer
18. What do you wish you’d done more of?
Enjoyed myself, finished projects, been healthier.
19. What do you wish you’d done less of? .
Been annoyed by things.
20. How will you be spending Christmas?
Traditional Christmas, At home with family.
21. What was your favourite month of 2006?
I don’t think i have a favourite month of 2006.
22. Did you fall in love in 2006?
No. I believe I am too fussy!
23. How many one-night stands?
Err, we counting just a single night, not like a couple of nights.
I not the kind of man who kisses and tells, so lets just say more than several, less than dozens.
24. What was your favourite TV programme?
- Coupling.
(Thanks to Pete for making me watch the backlog of episodes.)
25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
Yes, My Evil Aunt.
26. What was the best book you read?
The Warriors Edge.
This started my Technoshaman Training.
27. What was your greatest musical discovery?
None.
28. What did you want and get?
A 1st Edition Copy of The Warriors Edge.
29. What did you want and not get?
A Glock 19 – But they were out of stock, so I should get it in February!
30. What was your favourite film of this year?
-
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest.
31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I cant remember, it was a busy week, visiting people around the place, fancy do, clubbing.
32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
A Happier Workplace, A long term Relationship, More Free Time.
33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2006?
Jeans and Sweatshirt – Casual Attire.
34. What kept you sane?
My collection of talking potatoes.
35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
I am not sure this year. Err…
If I had to pick someone because some end of year questionnaire forced me to, then I guess..
Fergie Ferg From the Black Eye’d Peas
36. What political issue stirred you the most?
The forced dissection of aliens? no idea I don’t do politics.
37. Who did you miss?
My Grandmother.
38. Who was the best new person you met?
Don’t think there was one.
39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2006?.
Never ignore injuries, they just get worse.
40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.
We are the D!
We are the D!
We are the D!