domdavis.com

January: “Get prepared for next Christmas, for just £x per month you too can loose all your money when our company goes tit’s up depriving you of vouchers for money off Christmas from all these shops.”

September: “Christmas is coming, better start thinking about what you’re going to be getting people.”

October: “Don’t forget about Christmas, it’s closer than you think.”

November: “It’s Christmas! Shop! All of you, before it’s too late!”

December 1st-23rd: “Oh my God people, there are only x shopping days left before Christmas! Have you got everything you need? Are you sure? Panic!”

December 24th: “ONLY 1 DAY LEFT! GO! SHOP! QUICKLY! BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE. CHRISTMAS IS HERE!! Oh, and the sales start boxing day.”

December 25th: “Boxing Day sales! We’re open from 9am Boxing Day! Don’t miss out!”

What!?? You’ve been driving Christmas down my throat for 12 sodding months and now you’re telling me about boxing day!

I *bang* want *bang* each *bang* and *bang* every *bang* bloody *bang* one *bang* of *bang* the *bang* retards *bang* responsible *bang* for *bang* this *bang* lined *bang* up *bang* in *bang* front *bang* of *bang* me *bang* so *bang* I *bang* can *bang* shoot *bang* each *bang* and *bang* every *bang* bloody *bang* one *bang* of *bang* them *bang*!

From a work perspective this Monday is just utterly pointless. Those who can take holiday have, the rest are not exactly holding business hours (yes, I know it’s not even 9, but this is a global organisation we’re talking about here and we do operate 24×5.5) and to be honest, who can blame them?

I’m the first to say I do absolutely sod all at work, but on occasion I do actually do some. All I need to do for the rest of this year is get a test working and have someone sign off on it. I’ve never seen the code in question before and no one except the developer has seen it run, so there’s going to be teething problems. That’s fine, that’s expected. Problem is this thing takes over 15 minutes to fail and will only run before midday (after that the input files become invalid and removing the logic checking for that kind of renders the test pointless). Given I need services run by other teams to be up and running and I am getting absolutely no response from them I don’t think I’m going to get my test working today. Since I’ve got nothing else to do you’ve really got to ask: What’s the point? Thankfully I’m ‘working’ from home so I can watch TV while waiting

Joy, get back this weekend and find an £800 service charge bill for the house. I was rather hoping they’d ask for quarterly or 6 monthly payments, not all of it up front. Hey well. I also got a reminder from the electricity company for my meter readings. I tried to enter them but it would appear a proper meter reader has been round already and entered the wrong values for my meter so I am now unable to put the real figures in as they’re lower than what’s in there already. Why do I get the impression this one is going to take weeks to sort out? ‘Tis the season to get hacked of with people demanding money from me.

OK, so I totally stole this from an email from Bathgirl, but hey, that’s how memes are started. So, todays meme is to pick 5 songs that sum up your year.

I’m going for:

Fear Factory, Archetype (from the album Archetype)
Threat Signal, Counterbalance (from the album Under Reprisal) - especially the last bit
Killing Joke, You’ll Never Get To Me (from the album Killing Joke)
Blink 182, I Miss You (from the Greatest Hits album)
Fear Factory, Zero Signal (from the album Demanufacture)

Yeah, been a bit of a crap year really.

Whats on your list. Entries in the comments, or feel free to create your own blog post

I heard on the radio during the religious news section (I’m amazed the PC brigade even allow that, but they have the odd Rabbi on for the talky bit afterwards so I guess that counts as multi-faith) that churches are being encouraged to hold midnight mass at 8pm to stop drunken people disrupting them. I’m sorry?! Much as I detest Christmas this is a Christian country and if people want to go to midnight mass then fair do’s, as far as I’m concerned they can go as nuts as they like over the whole Christmas thing since they’re not being hypocritical. Anyone who wants to disrupt that should be shot. Plain and simple. It’s not big, it’s not funny, it’s just a damning indictment on how low this country has sunk. The same news segment told me that countries in the middle east were all geared up for Christmas in the shops, hotels and homes of the ex-pats (and even some locals) and all seemed to be happy about it, none of this hiding behind ‘happy holidays’ and other embarrassed claptrap that tries it’s hardest to keep everyone happy. Meanwhile people here are buying 36 (yes, 4 lots of 9) rolls of toilet paper in order to tide them over the Christmas holiday. HELLO?! The shops are closed for 2 days. TWO. Unless you’re planning for a large meal with a shed load of amoebic dysentery you’re probably going just a tiny bit overboard here. 3 trolley loads of shopping is also a tad excessive, although if you’re going to need ‘ammo’ for those bogrolls then I guess you’re on target there. I think some people need to get a grip and regain some perspective.

To continue with the whole theme of making the Lehman Bros. Websense filter wet itself today we’re going to talk about tits in great detail. Being winter you don’t get to see many tits about these days, but I saw a gorgeous pair today on full display that just made me stop and look. I didn’t really have time to get my phone out to photograph them before they were gone but to be honest I really need to SLR to do beauties such as these justice. It’s a shame really as I’ve never had the opportunity to photograph tits especially not with my nice big camera, they tend to be too shy. Still, I may know some people that will be able to sort out a nice shoot of a whole variety of tits. I’ll have to ask my step dad, I’ll also have to ask him what tits I saw today, I think they were bluetits but he’s the bird expert not me…

Why? What did you think I was talking about?!

Please accept with no obligation†, implied or implicit, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low stress, non-addictive, gender neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, as recognised within parts of the northern hemisphere of the planet, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasions and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all; and a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling, and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2008, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures, and without regard to the race, creed, colour, age, physical ability, religious faith, choice of computer platform, or sexual preference of the wishees.

†By accepting this greeting, you are accepting these terms. This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It is freely transferable with no alteration to the original greeting. It implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for her/himself or others, and is void where prohibited by law, and is revocable at the sole discretion of the wisher. This wish is warranted to perform as expected within the usual application of good tidings for a period of one Gregorian calender year, or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first, and warranty is limited to replacement of this wish or issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wisher.

“Join in“, they say.

“Be happy“, they say.

“Put some decorations up“, they say.

Well, OK, normally I’d just shake my head and mutter quietly about the idiocy of putting bits of shiny foil on a soon to be dead fir tree but it turns out Christmas decorations can make me smile. The effort we have in our office, for example, makes me piss myself with laughter every time I walk past it. The girls tried hard to make it look festive, but the tree they were given is just so sad that no amount of decoration is going to help.

So we’ve lost a bit of money recently [yes, and the sun is a bit warm], but we’re still a tier 1 investment bank (we must be, only the big boys could loose the amount we did ) so you’d think they could have given us better. At least the ones in full view of the public actually look like Christmas tress should.

Oh, and the cutout bit where the tree is normally where a minion would sit, but we’ve got a few free desks these days after our last round of involuntary separations from payroll.

Turns out that Websence (or what we in the industry call The Web Gestapo) at Lehman Brothers has decided that this site should be blocked because ‘Sex if Filtered‘.  OK, if it was ‘burning of poor people is not consistent with our core values‘ then I’d understand it, but sex? I wish. It’ll be interesting to see if our installation of Websence decides to ban me at my office

Oh, and apologies for people thinking that this post was anything but tentatively related to boobaloids

You’ll be delighted to know that there are no planned changes to the law on carrying guitars in public in general and on trains specifically. Furthermore you do no need to place them in a bag and the bag certainly does not need to be locked.

Once we got passed the bit where I explained I was talking about something thinner and sharper than a guitar (really, is my pronunciation that bad?) in great detail (you’d think a police officer would know what a ‘katana‘, or ‘samurai sword‘ was; I used both terms before giving up and saying “it’s a bloody sharp 3′ blade with a 1′ handle“) I also discovered the change in the law doesn’t affect me. To their credit the British Transport Police were able to answer me there and then. Still waiting for a response from Essex police.