i am sparticus: Words

Birth

Today is the birth of the first dreadlock. Although my head it covered in them, very few are real dreads, except today the first one was born. This means I took the band off him because he is matted and tight. What a great day. I decided to name him Jimanabob. I shall closely monitor his progression over the next few days and see if he can live without his band. A few others are following the shining example of Jimanabob, however most are still like pony tails with bands at the roots. Dreads at the start are one big nightmare, they look naff, lots of loose hair and allot of icthes. However in around 3-8 months they turn into dreads like Jimanabob. Mine are just over one month old so im pleased so far.
Today I handed in my resignation at work. No wait, I was going to be realised im lazy so I didnt. However I must do it sometime this week or they wont let me leave, ever. I talked to my manager about it (so I could avoid taking calls) and we had a great half-hour convo about back in the 60's when he was at uni. He managed to flood the basement with foam from what was quite possibly the first washing machine known to man. Apparently there were 2 guys trying to play table tennis at the time. I could just imagine two guys up to their waste in foam still playing. I think thats some sort of gay thing. Best forget that. Besides im sure he was swept away with the drug crazed culture of the 60's.
Another pressing issue I was meaning to bring up to him and possibly his line manager was something that was burning a hole in the back of my mind for several weeks. I first came accross the issue while playing snooker with Ted. I thought 'My god, thats a question to ask my line manager' The question is 'what would Gizmo be like as a gremlin ?. I will take another half an hour off the phones Saturday and ask him, maybe even spam all@ntl.com.
People are always saying to me 'Seb, what are you doing in my garden ?'

Dentist

They recorded my calls today to send to the new call centre in India that will soon be taking the overflow calls from us (what they class as overflow is beyond me since there is always 50 calls waiting). Not being picked to go to India made this was quite an honor, since there were only another 3 names on the list. All the calls that were recorded were frecking nightmares, each one at least 10 minutes in length. One of them the gentleman was extremely p'd off and I was worried how I was going to calm him down. The trick is, not to let them get a word in, otherwise you open yourself wide for a 14 minute story of how their 15 year old daughter needs the interweb access for her homework just at the start of the summer holidays. Reminds me of the gentleman who wanted to cancel because he was experiencing time outs while trying to send 1000 emails using our smtp. smtp was down and the time and I got the feeling the reason for this was speaking on the phone to me at that exact time. His excuse 'I have done it before no problems'
The drive home that evening was your average drive home after work. As of late I drop my team mate Dibbie (www.dibbie.com) off at his house, since its on the way. However to shave some extra seconds off my journey I often attempt a single turn in the road. Todays turn didnt go to well, especialy when I heard the crunch of the car getting caught on a short wall. As i reversed away, the bumper came detached from the body of the Ka. Not enough to completely fall off, yet enough to ensure its not going to be easily put back on. I sat down to have some singapore slings as my financial advisor worked out the market value of my car, which was approx £22.43. I shall become a greasemonkey and try fix the damn thing tomorrow. 'Hey, did your sister mention me?' etc. I plan to say that to Bob.
That even I watched Big Brother to notice a very interesting fact.
People hit the self destruct button when under pressure, ie up for eviction. Victor, who is up for eviction this week has gone psycho on everyone in the house (except his gay lover Jason) , reminding me of when Marco hit the self destruct button over his calculation that Stuart must have voted for him. After his performance, I feel Victor will go the way of the door.
In conclusion of tonights blog, Marco loves the cock.

The Take-Over

Yes if only Sparky, if only indeed.
Well for those who don't know it, the Wallster has given me full blogging permission to his site. Although I had the feeling this was some kind of crazy scheme that Sparticus was cooking up, it would actually seem that I can now blog. However Markus has spies on the interweb with figure?s on the ready to cut me off the first blog I produce on Porn / Anti-Christianity / how wonderful Starbucks is / etc. In fact a time ago, I remember my own blog filled with some of the finer things in life - Harsh language, Starbucks E-Coffee, Naked Chicks as far as the mouse could click .... Il try keep you entertained but compared to all those things, I just don't know. Onto this evenings blog. All blogs are pretty much what's going on. I have no gimmicks, just an interesting life (zzzz)

Today had been a good and bad day in work. Being the only level 2 on the team I had to go through the team Q where bounced engineer requests and mistakes made by the team members were placed for some poor sod to call the customer back and explain why they haven't heard from an engineer for over a week. Usually they are bounced back for missing info such as the cable modem light sequence, I emailed Steve for that very reason to which he stood up and threatening to kill me. I didn't believe him, however I did feel slightly intimidated. The crazy people are always the ones most likely to enjoy watching you bleed, then maybe even drink your blood. He seemed that type, the ones with a blood pressure so high you can see the veins on the forehead pumping away. I figured if I could just keep my distance and yell abuse he might keel over from a heart attack. Luckily after some harsh language he sat down.
I talked it over with him during the lunch our period to which he admitted he was going to kill me. I made a mental note not to come into work on his last day, as he would probably stab me with his head set then beat me to death using the phone.
After that the day went swiftly, managed to convince the Q desk to put me on call backs for the last 2 hours and sat there making the most of it.

That evening I was due in the Potter's Wheel, one of Swansea's many Public Houses. Still sat at my PC scrambling away at the keyboard, in a odd attempt to create a blog, I decided the new early was to be late. A phone call later and I was to find out the evenings company, due to a booking misunderstanding, were unable to be seated and needed to dine at another one of Swansea's high class restaurants, meaning my services would not be needed.
Deciding I was already partied out after 'The Picture Incident' of Wednesday, I flicked on the TV only to miss who was being evicted from Big Brother, although since there were mainly shots of Ahmed I guessed it was him, or the camera man was being silly. A quick flick around the movie channels came to very little, as did flicking around the music channels. To my despair there was no spongebob on at that time of night, however the Jetsons were driving around in a flying car. Where is my flying car ?
Typical of TV, it always lies to me

Slovakia

I'm off to Slovakia for nine whole days tomorrow. If that wasn't enough I'm straight off to London for Soul In The City immediately afterwards, so that means a distinct lack of updating from me.
Oh if only someone else was to update this site in my absence eh?

Mr. Moony Asks About The Death Star

Mr. Moony asks:

Do you believe there were contract workers on the death star that didn't deserve to die when it blew up, or that they deserved to die for their evil work?

Imagine the scene; Mr. Contract Worker and his wife are having a conversation.

Mr. Contract Worker Hey honey! Guess what? We got a huge contract in today! Gonna be building ourselves a battle station the size of a planet!
Wife Why that's great dearest! But why on earth does the Empire need a battle station the size of a planet?
MCW Well I'm guessing from the size of the laser we gotta build it's going to be for blowing up planets!
Wife Gosh! How exciting!
MCW Unfortunately though, it's all so top secret that I'm going to have to kill you now
Wife Crumbs!

This conclusively proves that unless you are evil, you wouldn't be working on the deathstar. However, it doesn't really seem to matter in Star Wars if you are evil or good, because only Jedis seem to go onto anything further and even that looks pretty dumb. Floating around like a bunch of ghosts, I mean could you put up with Yoda for all eternity?

Server Issues

The server this website runs off is currently experiencing some technical difficulties. If you've tried to go to iamsparticus.co.uk/ then things may have gone a bit funny on you. Oddly enough though if you've tried to go to iamsparticus.co.uk/index.php (which should be identical) you get no such problems. Also internet explorer doesn't seem to be having any such issues, which is unusual to say the least. I'm assuming it's a server issue and not a me issue, but you never know with these things, so any help would be appreciated.

Also, if anyone could tell me how to get .htaccess to redirect any queries at iamsparticus.co.uk/ to iamsparticus.co.uk/index.php that'd be just swell (Redirect messes up when I attempt it)

Foo, I hit publish, and the entire problem disappears and it works dandy in every browser. Scratch that then.

Don't Make Eye Contact

It's always a challenge walking home from work. On a bad day walking along the main pedestrain thoroughfare you've got to negotiate at least five seperate groups of people wanting your attention. First come the market researchers, then come the charity workers (kids and disabled charities), then the nightclub flyer giver outs, then the insurance sales people, then finally more charity workers (third world aid).
Up until last week it was relatively easy to avoid them, you just identified the workers ahead then looked away, monitoring them out of the corner of your eye as you went past. However as of Monday a disturbing pattern has occured. Each time I've identified an upcoming group and gone to avoid them I've walked into the path of another group who have been lying in wait. The worrying fact is this: They've learnt to work together. It can only be a matter of time now before they start to develop rudimentary tools such as nets and spears. I'm just glad I'm leaving the country.

Capitalist Pigs

When Catherine and I took on Starbucks (May their CEO's feet eternally reek of cheese) we feared there would be reprisal. However, we knew that someone had to stand up to them. If it wasn't us, who else would it be? Still, as dangerous as our cause is, I was unprepared for the barrage of abuse that would come from the imperialist capitalist satanic american communist pig dogs. Already Starbucks' minions have made their feelings known.
All I can say is I'm glad I'm leaving the country at the end of this week.

Slovak Croner

Me: Hi, could I get £30 worth of Slovak Koruna please?
Bureau De Change Person: £30? Are you sure that's going to be enough? Because we can change much more than that.
Me: Good grief.

Giving Money Away

I went to my bank today, to talk to them about overdrafts. It's not that I'm in great financial danger or anything, it's just that I need to pay for my forthcoming trip to Slovakia before a bunch of cheques will clear. Anyway, it's irrelevant really, because that's not what today's important piece of literature is about! Oh no!

You see, I go into the bank and they point me to a nice man. I explain the situation and how I have one of these fancy student account with their interest free overdrafts and the guy smiles pleasantly at me
Bank Dude: So how large an overdraft do you want?
Me: £500 pounds please.
BD: Okay, just let me check.Taps away for a bit on his keyboard. Just £500?
Me: Yeah, is that okay?
BD: Oh yeah sure, but you do realise you're allowed up to £1500?
Me: Just £500 please.
BD: looking puzzled So, not £1500? Because you could have it. Are you positive?
Me: No really, I'm fine. £500 is going to be more than enough.
BD: Oh. Okay. Shrugs shoulders
Bank Dude taps away for a bit
BD: Well, I've updated your account sir, that should be ready as of now.
Me: Thanks! Starts to leave
BD: No problem. Oh wait, did you know that you could apply for a credit card with us? It's really good! And you get free vouchers with it!

These are the people to blame when under crippling debt the country sinks into violence, anarchy and Viking metal.

Incorrectly Sized Straws

Catherine and I paid a visit to Starbucks today. The atmosphere was nice, the drinks were alright and the service was friendly. However, none of that could compensate for the sheer ridiculousness of what came with Caff's frappuccino. Imagine a clear plastic cup around 12cms high. Now imagine that accompanyng that cup a straw around 26cms long. Actually, don't imagine it. Instead view it.

As you can see, even when placed at a great as angle as possible the straw was still sticking ridiculously far out.

Now, not wanting to be rude, but what is the point of this? I mean who needs that much straw? Even checking the other cup sizes, none of them were significantly bigger so as to need a bigger straw. Surely it's unsafe and to have that much straw poking out? Not to mention uneconomical.

Fortunately they provided feedback forms, with enough room for diagrams, that we were able to fill in.

Guess The .Swf File

Okay, so this is a flash introduction to a website. Now the task for everyone reading is to go see the movie and guess what the site is trying to sell.
The winner, gets a hearty pat on the back.

Oh and disappointingly, in removing the logo from the flash movie (that's where the red circle comes in, it replaces the logo), I lost the sound. Imagine a woman singing 'Discover the champion in you' in an American accent and you're pretty much there.

1000

I think it says something truely profound that the one thousandth entry on iamsparticus.co.uk was about accidentally spraying Deep Heat on my crotch. That deep heat eh?
But what's that? 'The one thousandth entry?' But yes!
It's taken 616,765 characters, 140,413 words, 13,375 sentences and 4,666 paragraphs. Using the normal Microsoft word template it would take you 270 pages to print out everything I've written. It's taken a grand total of 3 years, 1 month and 4 days to finally get here.
In celebration of this happy moment, I'd like to thank a few people. Lardpony Tom for getting me into this whole thing, my parents, for putting up with it all (and even reading it), everyone who I've written about, who has commented or who has linked, Helen, for contributing to this grand post count and giving me a copy of Fireworks MX and Radiohead, The Cooper Temple Clause, Kinesis, Easyworld, At The Drive-In, R.E.M., Simle Kid and every other band/artist that has made my life that bit more enjoyable.
Finally, I'd like to thank the Lord God almighty for thinking of such a genius thing as the internet, for being so creative as to make communication enjoyable, for keeping me going from day to day, and for making rock music and for the awesome undeserved goodness He gives.

Deep Heat

Remember, always take extra special care aiming the spray can when using Deep Heat on your upper thighs.

Home

I'm back in Swansea on the 3rd of July and I'm hanging around till the 8th. I say this to give you all time to plan exciting things involving beer, cake and red shoes.

"My name is Freddy Kreuger and I've got the Elm Streets Blues - I've got a hand like a knife rack and I die in every film