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I was meant to be working a late shift (1200 - 2000) on October 22nd (and also the 29th, but that's less relevant here). When I booked up to go to Vegas, I obviously couldn't do that. Rather than just dump my team in the shit, I asked if anyone could swap the shifts. No problems there, so I switched with one of the girls on the team. She'll do my 22nd, and I'll do her October 15th shift.

All fine and dandy, until I walk past Waterstone's in town today, and see a poster in the window. Neal Stephenson will be talking about his new book, and signing copies. Guess when? October 15th, or this would have been a very irrelevant post. 1830 - 2000.

Doubt the team will handle another swap, so it looks like I'm missing then. Bah!

Stuff and nonsense.

Had a nasty 'wake up during the night in a panic' moment the other night. For some reason, I just had visions of showing up at the airport to fly and being asked "Nice printout, who the hell are you?" because I'd booked through lastminute.com. Turns out I needn't have worried, checked the KLM and Northwest websites, and my booking's listed on both. So I'm good to go on that front. Less than a month!

What else is new? Not a lot. Got the In Flames gig this Saturday, which I'm looking forward to, although if I'm honest, I'm more interested in the support band, Gojira, seeing as how their new album's amazing.

That's it really, will update if anything exciting happens, honest!

This post brought to you by Old Pulteney single malt whisky

Right, so I sat down tonight to watch the Celtic game, and had a glass of whisky. Nerves (hell, it's the champions League, I always get nervous) meant that the first glass was finished in double quick time.

Frustration at our inability to finish off nice passing movements accounted for glasses two and three. Glass four came and went thanks to Barry Robson having a 24' by 8' area to aim at for the penalty he took, yet still hitting it straight at the fucking keeper.

More of the same in the second half, and now the bottle's finished. I appear to have drunk more than I intended. Not the best performance from Celtic (verging on mince), and now I feel all empty.

Being a football fan's a sure-fire way to have a life of ups and downs. 5 games to go in the group stages. There's a bottle of Ardbeg to get me through those.

Call centre heaven?

Anyone who has ever worked in a call centre knows about 'The Parting Shot'. It's when the call's ending, and the caller wants to get in some final dig at you when you don't have the chance to respond.
--Okay, thanks for calling.
--Goodbye...you Scotch cunt*click*

The sort where you want to look up their number and call them back to point out that
a) They're quite the telephone tough guy, and
b) Scotch is a drink, you moronic buffoon.

The other kind of parting shot is the phrase said to someone else in the room. Sometimes, this is genuine, sometimes not. Either they'll switch their demeanour to talk to their cohort:
--Well, thanks for all your help anyway..................Well they're no fucking he*click*

Or they'll pretend to do the same, bellowing loudly (volume and intelligence frequently being inversely proportional) to their couch, presumably in the misguided hope that I'll be racked with guilt at their plight and call them back, apologise, and point out that I've checked again and I actually DO have the power to amend government policy and violate all manner of anti-discrimination laws to suit their every whim.

Anyway, I digress. The point of this entry was to note that the complete reverse happened the other day. It was a simple case of moving records, updating an employer, splitting allowances and issuing a couple of codes. Bread and butter for any semi-competent revenue monkey. Explained what would happen and what the timescales would be, and as she hung up, I heard her talking to her mum in the background (genuine, voices off had been heard all call).
--Okay, goodbye.............He was fantas*click*
Calls like that do happen every so often, and it's quite the ego boost.

Of course, the next call was a stuck up prick that I wished would die in a freak yachting accident, and normal service was resumed.

Nom

Finished work early today, and the entire team went out for a meal. Excellent new Chinese restaurant in EK, food was absolutely amazing. Have now eaten far, far too much.

I think i may be compelled to go to the gym pre-work tomorrow to burn some of this off.

Vomitorium

Got sent home from work today (well, made the decision to leave with no protestations to the contrary from the team leader) for throwing up after less than two hours of my shift. Lovely.

And in happier news, I had a eureka moment last night and now know what I'm doing for Halloween. Minimum effort, maximum geekery, Dr McNinja is in the house.

Minor intermission

Been reading Michael Palin's diaries recently (the published ones, it's not like I've been sneaking into his house when he's not there), and one point jumped out at me.

In an entry from the late 70s, he mentions that petrol has hit the heights of £1 per gallon, so he walks his daughter to school in the hope of being a bit more ecologically minded.

Nothing changes...

Calvin's novelty song principle.

Work was fairly boring yesterday, although I did manage to spend half an hour doing nothing after relocating to the 4th floor because half my systems wouldn't boot up.

Only real highlight of the day was when I started corpsing while on a call. Some guy had called in and said he'd stop talking because a police / ambulance / whatever siren was blaring outside. After it passed, he added, off-hand "They'll not sell much ice cream at that speed".

Now, anyone knows that joke is ancient. And I've heard it literally hundreds of times before. But for some reason, it just set me off. So this guy's trying to ask for help with his tax, and I'm doing my best to stifle laughter, completely unable to pay attention to a word he's saying. And as we all know, when you try and hold in laughter, it redoubles its efforts to escape. Eventually managed to calm myself down, but I don't think he was too pleased.

I suppose I should be thankful he wasn't calling to report a bereavement.

XLVII

Got my flights booked today, so I'm good to go.

October 21st: Glasgow --> Amsterdam --> Detroit --> Las Vegas.
October 30th: Las Vegas --> Portland --> Amsterdam --> Glasgow.

Flight out leaves Glasgow at 5.55am, but that's the only niggle, and it gives me the biggest window at various airports for catching connections / getting through immigration etc.

I'll try and make a post soon that isn't just me rabbiting on about my trip, honest!

A commendable focus on all the wrong things.

In work early today. Building up flexi-time? Showing an admirable work ethic? Fuck no. Got in, signed onto the computer, and immediately fired up the leave request stencil. Took most of the day, but they finally got back to me. Confirmed!

So while everyone else is busting their asses dealing with people who can't fill in a form correctly, I'll be about 8000 miles away. Just have to arrange flights for that, and I'm good to go. Have an agreement in principle from my sister to crash at hers if flying from Manchester turns out to be the best option, so I'll spend the next day or two checking prices and times and other such things.

Cannot wait.

Bright light city...

Not updated here in ages, will try and make updates a bit more frequent from here on out. And most of y'all will probably have stopped checking the damn thing. Unless you've got RSS enabled or other such technical wizardry.

Aaaaaanyway. Was taking a particularly hellish call in work today, an informant. If someone calls in to snitch that someone's not paying their tax, we have to note all the details they tell us and pass it up the food chain. Which meant that I had the delights of 37 minutes of noting down the oft-repeated assertions of our caller that the gentleman of foreign descent that she was reporting was probably not declaring his income.

She had no actual evidence for this claim, of course, beyond her convictions that "These people come into our country, use the facilities, and don't contribute. They should just go home". And I had to sit there, and listen, and note it down, and listen some more, and waste some poor sucker of a compliance officer's time with this crap. I hate the public at times.

Back to the point, however. While doing all this, I realised how fed up I was. So I checked the leave calendar, right around the peak time for the self-assessment deadline. And it was green, so the chances of me getting that time off are pretty good. Will request it off tomorrow, and then I should be set for a proper holiday, my first in 4 years. All going to plan, I'll be goin' back to Vegas! I'm more psyched for this than I have been for anything in quite some time. So fingers crossed that it doesn't go tits up.

Oh yeah, and you should all watch The Wire, which I've only just discovered and is excellent.