Ben Shephard

Yep all good things really do come to an end. I’ve been seeing someone over the last three months or so and it started off really well except for one thing. There was no magic spark for me. I really couldn’t see it lasting years and years. I don’t know why because I think the main thing that drove us apart was the fact that there was just something missing for me. We’ve both come to the realisation that we are better off going our separate ways. Over the last month we’ve become more and more distant and today we decided to call it quits. Were still good friends which is nice. Hopefully one day I’ll find the right person.

I’m looking forward to the weekend. It’s really not been the best of weeks for me at all. I’d really like to just pick myself up and move on with things. I really don’t know what’s around the corner now but I’ve got my summer holiday to look forward to. I think I’ll have another herbal happy pill and an early night tonight. I’ll spend the weekend trying to work out how to move forward again. Time to clean my crystals I think.

Ben

= 5.3

I just don’t know what’s wrong with me this week. I’ve not been feeling right since Monday. I just don’t want to wake up in the morning any more. Every little thing seems to be bugging the crap out of me. Granted not much has gone well this week anyway for me but I just feel really low for some reason. It could be the weather which has been pretty naff the last few days but I don’t know. I’ve not slept properly all week. It’s got to a point now where I’ve had to break the St Johns Wort out again. I think I got quiet used to being alone last week and going back to work where I’m suddenly surrounded by people again is a bit of a shock to the system. I like to be left alone to just get on with things. The last few days at work have been pretty hectic. There has recently been an extra person put in the office where I work so now there are three of us in there and it can get a bit noisy in there. There is soon to be another addition to make it four people in one small office. I prefer to work alone where I can start a job and think about nothing but that until I’m finished. I don’t like distractions. After lunch today I was on my own for an hour or so and the phone went pretty quiet so I was able to just zone out and concentrate on a couple of big jobs. They weren’t complex jobs but just user admin jobs so I had a couple of big lists to just get stuck into. It really felt like the rest of the world around me just melted away and it was just me and my computer. When I don’t have to be some where I quiet like to stay at work for an extra half hour or so. I tend to find that because everyone else has gone home and there are no distractions what so ever. I can get three times as much work done than I can in half an hour in the middle of the afternoon. If I’ve got something I want to concentrate on sometimes I’ll leave it and stop late to do it when everyone has gone that way when the phone rings I’m not in the middle of something and I can give my full attention to the calls and not try to multi task. I think I need to find ways to zone out all the background noise. I’d like a special headset that has two closed ear pieces to block out the outside world and when I’m not on a call it would be nice if I could hear some soothing music in the back ground to keep me chilled. To block out the visual distractions I’d like to ditch the monitors and invest in some kind of virtual reality goggles so all I can see is my keyboard and mouse and above that just blackness and my screen. I’d look like a right berk but I wouldn’t have to hear anyone moaning on about the price of bread or slobbering over passers by. You don’t hear much talk of VR goggles these days. They occasionally pop up on the technology programs on TV but mainly to be laughed at. OK so they look a bit silly but it’s only the same idea as headphones. There never seems to have been a great deal of interest in such a product but if I could get hold of a pair with a decent native resolution I’d have a set. I had a quick Google and the best pair I found out of the first few pages were only 640×480 and they were $400 (click here) I think its time we took this kind of technology seriously because if they did them with a 1280×1024 resolution I’d snatch their hand off at $400.

It appears to be time I wasn’t here any more. Ah well lets see how tomorrow goes now I’m back on the herbal happy pills.

Ben

= 5.3

Yep it’s been one of those days. I really regret waking up this morning. It went a bit like this.

I got up and went to work in the rain. Nothing much has changed while I’ve been off work but the helpdesk software has been running really slowly making things really hard work. It rained at lunch and I got a bit damp going to my parents. My Mum agreed to do dinner too so I was looking forward to finishing work to get there. I ended up leaving work late because the helpdesk software was slowing me down so much. I finished up all the loose ends and closed the office door at about 6:05 only to be stopped and searched by security for a good 15 minutes or so. I’ve no problem with being searched but it would be nice if it were done at a time when my dinner wasn’t going cold. I’d been held up enough already without messing about emptying my bag and getting 20 questions. I was only allowed to leave when my Mum called my mobile to find out where I’d got to. So I made my way through the heavy traffic back to my parents. I suppose in a way heavy traffic is a good sign because it means more people have been at work than before Easter. I got to my parents and had dinner and sat and watched TV with them for a while. I’m keeping a close eye on the news because the swine flu thing could put the brakes on my plans for the summer. I’m hoping it turns out to be nothing but it is a bit worrying.

So it’s been a really grey day. I hope things are a bit better tomorrow.

Ben

= 5.7

I’ve had one week off work and it’s been a brilliant week. The weather has been fantastic and I’ve done stuff I wanted to do. I decided not to spend the week rushing to get everything done. I’ve not done as much decorating as I’d hoped I might but I didn’t want to go back to work feeling like I’ve not taken time to relax for a few days. I’ve spent plenty of time working on my computers. My server is running pretty smoothly now and both my laptop and netbook have been upgraded to Ubuntu 9.04.

I’ve also been out and upgraded my mobile phone to a G1. It’s a nice phone and what it does it does well for the most part. It’s tied to my G-mail account and I can update my contacts on the phone and on G-mail and they sync up nicely but I had a text message today from someone who wasn’t in my phone book and I couldn’t find an option to add them from the text message. I had to note down the number and go into the phone book and re enter it by hand. Perhaps I just couldn’t see the button because most things tie together nicely. The app market is pretty good. most apps are free but some charge a couple of quid but not much but the free ones are pretty good. There is a really nice little SSH client called ConnectBot which works very nicely indeed. There  is a LastFM player which is very good and the You Tube app works pretty nicely too. I’m yet to try out google maps as a sat nav but I think Tom tom would be pretty hard to beat so I’m not holding my hopes up. The Shop Savvy app is pretty impressive. You can scan the bar code on say a book or cd and find out if it’s cheaper online or at another shop near by. hopefully this will help me save a few quid here and there. There is even an FTP server available for it which might come in handy one day. I need to use it for a few weeks before I can get a proper grasp of what it’s like to live with but its pretty user friendly. I’m glad I had this one instead of waiting for the G2 to come out next month because that has an on screen keyboard and I tried the one on the I-phone and I just couldn’t get on with it. My fingers are just too fat.

Anyway time for some kip I’m already two hours into my last day off and I want to make the most of it.

Ben

happy = 6.7

I’ve finally found time to sit down and chill out for a while. The weekend was pretty busy and Monday was pretty much the same. Yesterday I decided it was time to stop and reflect for a while so I decided to do some of those things that don’t take much thinking about. My mum bought me some plants the other day so I decided to go and get them in the garden before they wilted. She got me a Virginia creeper which I’ve planted next to the arch me and my dad made last summer. She gave me a Rhubarb which I’ve planted in a nice big open space on the other side of the arch. There were a couple of other plants too but I don’t remember their names. After planting them I got the hose out and watered them all in. While I had that out and it was a warm day I thought it might be a nice idea to jet wash all the green off the concrete on the back yard. I dug out the jet wash and set it all up but just as I was about to start the brass fitting that connects the hose to the lance sheared off with the pressure. I managed to get the bit out of the lance but I need to find my spanners to get the bit off the hose. I’ll have to take it up to my dad and see if he knows where I can get a new one. So I gave up on that idea and came back in and did some work on my static web pages. I managed to get a Google search box on my home page. I cheated a bit with this by coping the one off the Ubuntu start page and adding my own logos etc but then I went to look into setting up a custom search of my own and it looks pretty easy. Perhaps I can even have the search results display on a page with my own background etc if I play around with it enough. I might be tempted to start some painting later on but I’m not going to rush around any more to do stuff this week. It’s a beautiful day again today so I think I’ll have a ride out somewhere this afternoon.

Ben

= 6.6