What I did on my holidays.

I'm currently waiting on a rather large file downloading, and for reasons best known to itself and the gods of the internet, it's coming really slowly. So now is probably a good time to type up my Vegas trip report.

Getting there
Checked into Glasgow airport at 4am, and by 4.02 I had boarding passes etc, and a huge queue had materialised seemingly out of nowhere, so I'm hefty glad I got there first. Flight from Glasgow - Amsterdam was nice and relaxing, although it was all I could do to stay awake (since I'd decided Amsterdam - Detroit was where I'd sleep to stick two fingers up at jetlag). Funny moment at Amsterdam airport as the security dude asked a few questions before I got on the flight, and foolishly for him, one of them was whether I thought Celtic would win that night. Cue about 90 seconds of non-stop rant about why we wouldn't. Still, at least it convinced him I was genuine.

Next two flights were no problem at all, and I managed to sleep enough that I was wide awake by Vegas. Got off the plane, and...well, to paraphrase the Proclaimers: "And I would walk 500 miles,
And I would walk 500 more,
Just to be the man who walked 1000 miles to get from the plane to his fucking suitcase"
I'd forgotten just how far from the gate baggage reclaim was. I had to take a fucking tram! Anyway, met Jeff, got in car, went to his apartment, and met Liz, who was just as lovely as I'd imagined she'd be.

While I was there
I'd love to regale you with tales of everything I got up to while in the city of debauchery, but I am compelled to obey the ancient maxim of "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas". Well, not quite. To keep it short and sweet:
--Met up with a bunch cool people, some I'd met before, some not. The "Hey, you look familia....OH MY GOD, IT'S YOU!" reaction never gets old.
--Went to see Flogging Molly. Great show, most fun. Had only seen 15 minutes of them before, but there was a great atmosphere, and I'll be seeing them again if they come to Glasgow. Stayed out drinking until 5am afterwards, and got hit a lot to keep me awake. No pain, no gain etc...
--Got hair-gel-and-toothbrushed. Never thought I'd see the day, but ultimately I'm not that concerned. It was what it was.
--Visited the Hoover Dam. First look at the place and my brain was saying "Half-Life". No sign of any tentacle beasts though.
--Got sunburned. On my head. Hair thinner this trip than last trip. Only the one day though, remembered to chuck on a bandana the rest of the time.
--Also went to the shark reef at Mandalay Bay, and managed to accidentally turn round and appear face to face with the jellyfish exhibit. I'd been trying to avoid it. Best laid plans of mice and men etc etc. Rest of it was very interesting though, even if the spoilsport crocodile just sat there.
--Other stuff mentioned in previous entries, not typing it out again.
--Went to a shooting range. Despite my views on gun control, let it be known that shooting live ammo from a real gun is really fucking cool.

That's about it for now. I'm sure more'll come back to me, but I can tell y'all about that when I remember.

Coming home
Long day. Shortish flight from Vegas to Portland, huge wait in Portland airport, which seemed to be devoid of pretty much anything to do. Except eat a half pound burger, drink beer and chat up the cute barmaid. Loaded up on sleeping pills with the intention of sleeping from Portland to Amsterdam, which was foiled by the screaming banshee-child 2 seats over. And the incompetent mother who seemed to think that simply saying 'Shhh' in a soft voice would work this time, when it had failed on the previous 50,000 attempts. Final leg was Amsterdam to Glasgow, which featured the usual spastic Glaswegians applauding when the plane lands. Seriously, what the fuck? The guy did his job the way he was meant to. There wasn't a crosswind or anything like that, it was a textbook case of easy landing conditions. There's no need to clap for that. Do you clap when the a waiter brings you a steak from the kitchen and doesn't drop it, you dribbling shower of cunts?!?

Ahem. But yeah, fun week, good people, will probably last about 3 days here before I'm fed up with Scotland again.

Atacama Rain

Two thousand and forty-nine.
*click*
Two thousand and fifty.
*click*
Two thousand and fifty-one.
*click*
*reset*
One...

I got hair-gel-and-toothbrushed. Words fail me.

Just a brief update from sunny foreignland. All is going well, good people here, good weather, good times had by all.

Flight over was painless, no trouble this time, although a machine-gun speed 90 second rant about Celtic confused the security guy no end. Going to see Flogging Molly tonight, and there's talk of a free bar in the offing beforehand.

Also surprisingly devoid of hangover today, which is most bizarre given how much booze-drinkery we partook in last night. 3 of us put away about 1.75 litres of rum in about 4 hours or so. I can heartily recommend 'Karma' as a great drinking game to get you good and fucked up.

Will update in more detail when I get home.

I'm goin' on vacation!

Pretty much all set to go. Case is packed, all necessary documentation available and to hand (I hope!), not much else to do except wait.

Flight's in just under ten hours, so I'll be leaving here about half 2 in the am. Just gonna pull an all-nighter tonight and sleep on the Amsterdam - Detroit plane. Which no doubt means that insomnia'll kick in and I'll be awake for all nine hours or however long it is, thus fucking up my sleep pattern good and proper.

I'll have my phone with me this time, but I'm unsure as to the quality of reception or anything like that. And it'll cost a bomb to contact anyone, so that's more for emergencies and such like. Unsure as to how much web access I'll have, so the chances are I won't be in contact with y'all until I get back in ten days or so.

Have fun staying here, much as I intend to have all kinds of fun over there. And remember, what happens in Vegas...stays in Vegas.

Valuable lessons I have learned - an occasional series

Episode 420:
The back is more sensitive than the arm.

Penicillin not required

Finished work until November 4th!

I spent most of today being astonishingly lazy, and skiving at every possible opportunity. 5pm rolled round (early finish 'cause it was quiet) and I was out of there. Did a bit of shopping, and got most of the stuff I was taking to Vegas per requests from folk there. Just a couple of personal items still to get.

So I'm pretty much now on countdown to holiday. Woohoo!

National Customer Service Week - Ha!

Yesterday at work, we had the pointless farce of a team-building exercise because it was apparently 'National Customer Service Week'. I haven't seen a waste of time that big since the opening of the King Knut hydroelectric company.

Anyway, poor jokes aside, we got an hour off the phones to build a bridge between two tables about 18" apart, using the materials provided and anything we had on us. Given that our team had 5 guys in it, we thought outside the box and took our belts off, stretched them taut across the gap, and started taping them down. Win!

No, not quite win. We were then informed that 'one of your team has called in sick, you now have limited resources', and they took away the tape with only one belt attached. So we stuck 2 fingers up at them, tied all the other belts together, and then tied each end of that chain to the table. Bridge worked, we win easily.

Then the facilitator-type people made a foolish mistake. They handed out anonymous feedback sheets.

What challenges did you face?
An entirely arbitrary rule-change halfway through, designed solely to scupper a working plan.

How did you overcome this?
By using a lower-quality design and lesser materials, which is about right for the civil service.

What would you do differently next time?
Build the bridge using PFI, so we don't even have to pretend that customers matter if there's profit to be had.

If they don't want cynical answers to stupid questions, then they shouldn't have wasted my time with such a pointless charade.

Sold to the gentleman with the nervous twitch, that's the third Rembrandt he's bought today. Sir must be very rich.

Headed over to an auction on Saturday, a whole bunch of stuff was being sold off from a warehouse or something. Sadly, it had been advertised prominently in the previous day's Herald, so half of Glasgow also went along, to the extent that they ran out of numbers for folk to bid with.

Didn't end up winning anything in the end, it's one of those situations where you can save a fortune, but you have to have a decent bankroll to begin with (£8000 Persian rugs going for £2000 etc). I had my eye on some cases of cheap whisky, but Glasgow audiences being a touch stupid, they ended up selling for more than it'd have cost to buy them in the off-licence. So I appeared to be the one sensible one who didn't get carried away.

Decided after leaving that I did want whisky, so picked up a bottle of 15 year old Dalwhinnie on the way home. Nom nom nom.

Woofthudthudthudthudthudthudthudthud

Got home from work yesterday to be told that while my mum was getting ready for her golf club dinner, she heard a sound from outside her room. A sound that was a lot of dull thuds, one after the other. About ten of them. She came out into the hall, and saw the dog limping at the bottom of the stairs.

Yes, the family pet managed to fall down the stairs. Seems to be ok this morning, no lasting damage. Just another sign that she's getting old, I guess...