Stu.ie – A boy named Stu

My mum called me on the phone at about 11pm tonight. I decided to ignore it and call her back when a show had finished.

Shortly before I called back I prepared for an argument. One happens just about every time we speak. Especially if she’s had a drink.

She answered the phone in a good mood. She called to tell me about a sketch on TV reminding her of when I failed to get a job at McDonalds once. Itold her that it was at KFC, and then she started about how she once applied there when she was desperate for work, but refused to give them a photocopy of her passport.

I said that there was a good reason for having ID of people being hired, and it was just a photocopy. I don’t actually see the reason for it, but I doubt KFC are in the habit of selling photocopies of passports to let illegal immigrants in, as my mum shouted at me.

She then went on to shout about how they’re all drug dealers there because they found a hypodermic needle in the baby changing room once. I tried to point out that that only meant some scummy drug user had been there, but she’d moved on to how all of the NG18 postal code was run by drug dealers, and it wasn’t safe for her to go outside any more.

This is where I gave up trying to talk to her and came to bed.

This whole thing is getting old, fast.

I was altering some code in Vim a little while ago. I had recently undone some warnings because I thought I didn’t need them any more. It turned out that I did. I started typing :redo :redo :redo and the changes were coming back gradually, but it was a pain to type the command each time.

In Vim the ‘.’ key repeats the last action, so I figured it would save me a lot of time to just press that instead. Bad idea! The ‘.’ character will not repeat the :redo command, it will repeat the action that the :redo caused. So if :redo inserted some text then pressing ‘.’ will cause that same section of text to be inserted again.

This is not only a bit annoying, but also causes a divergence from the history meaning you can no longer use :redo to get back to where you were going.

A useful shortcut for redo in Vim is Ctrl-r. I’m slowly becoming less of a Vim n00b.

Now I better get back to typing in all of my warns.

For the last week or so I’ve been chasing around after the bank and my solicitor to try to keep them on their toes so that the mortgage and house can finally be transferred into just my name.

It’s not been particularly stressful so far, just expensive. It’s going to come to somewhere in the region of £600 which doesn’t include the £150 fee that Natwest will add onto the mortgage amount. I’m hoping the whole thing can be sorted in the next week or two. Lizz has had an offer accepted on a new place, so it seems silly that she should still be on pieces of paper linking her to Crown Street. Luckily I believe the mortgage has already been changed, but I don’t know if that counts for anything before I’ve filled out some forms for the new mortgage.

I’d just like to take a moment to say how absolutely brilliant it has been to use Natwest’s free callback service. I put my phone number in, say I want a phone call in so many minutes and they call me. It saves me looking all over the Internet for an outdated 01 or 02 number that I can call from my mobile phone. Thanks Natwest.

So yeah, that’s what I’m doing with my life at the moment. Exciting stuff, huh?

Just as I thought would happen when I wrote this blog post people have begun to say swine flu was a hoax by the large medical companies to make a load of money from vaccinations.

Why doesn’t anybody think that perhaps all the vaccinations people had prevented the situation from being far worse than it has been? Has everyone forgotten the quickly rising numbers of confirmed cases in the early stages?

Of course, I’m open to the suggestion that it could have all been hype from evil medical corporations run by heartless, unseen billionaires who want people to die so they could make a few more dollars, but it seems a little far-fetched. Too much like a plot from a bad movie. I believe the simpler theory is that the vaccination worked. Enough people were immunised against the virus and so it was stopped, or at least slowed. Occam’s razor.

Yay, it’s the future now! Twenty-ten has started.

I spent New Year’s eve in Mansfield town centre with Dave, Hayley, Katy, Ryan, etc. We started the night at Ryan’s house for the first couple, and then headed to The Mill. Everyone was in a good mood and looking forward to the rest of the night. So after a few more drinks we headed into town to Wetherspoons.

Drinks flowed for a while and then Len came to meet us. Other people left to go to The Mill as I had made everyone promise to do, but I stayed with Len in Wetherspoons instead. We saw the new year in there with some other people and then headed into Liquid for the remainder of the night.

It was a good night overall, and I was very pleased to get to bed, even though it was getting light by the time I got to sleep!

I got my new sofa delivered yesterday afternoon in the snow. I’d been waiting for this for a couple of weeks, so I was quite pleased that Dave’s brother-in-law was kind enough to make a special trip to get it to me on the weekend after a failure in communication between me, Jysk, and Dave (Dave’s brother-in-law is also called Dave).

When it arrived in two pieces they were both wrapped in lots of packaging. I ripped it open and when I was getting ready to put it together (as in the picture) I noticed that the two pieces were the same as each other! I had a wrong piece delivered from Jysk.

I called them and let them know. The guy on the phone didn’t seem very surprised at all, and told me that the replacement part wouldn’t be around until December 29th. He didn’t ask my name, address, or anything other than the type of sofa. I’m hoping that’s plenty enough information for them to identify me, but I’ll make sure I give them a call closer to the date to make sure of it.

For now I can put the two pieces together and have an almost-correct sofa, so it’s not a total failure.

I wrote a blog entry yesterday, and forgot to post it. Here it is:
—-
Today I am going to sit my driving theory test for the second time. I passed it 2 and a half years ago, but never actually got around to sitting the practical test. Unfortunately a theory test only lasts 2 years, and so now I’ve got to sit it again.

I haven’t really given the whole thing much thought, to be honest. I wouldn’t be that surprised if I failed because of the lack of effort and interest. I don’t want to fail it, but I also don’t care about passing enough to revise or anything like that. That seems kinda stupid, but oh well.

With any luck I’ll just go in there and pass it without much thought like I did last time. If not then I’ll book it again and put some proper effort in. I don’t like wasting money, but apparently that’s not a good enough reason to make a big effort this time.

I’ll update again when I know the results.
—-

I hope you’ll be pleased to hear that I passed the test. It could have gone better in the actual test, but I passed, so I no longer care!

Right, 2 years, let’s get cracking!

Last weekend I went away to Krakow in Poland from Friday night until Sunday with lots of people I used to work with at West Nottinghamshire College. Just about everyone who went away to Romania made it to this gathering too, plus some others that didn’t make it last time, so it was great!

We stayed in a hotel called Hotel Campanile which was on Ulica Tomasza. We arrived at the hotel at about 3:30 in the morning and a few of us decided to go straight out into the town rather than go to sleep. We went down the street to a little place called Cafe Philo which is a lovely little bar. While we were in there we had a few drinks and discovered the joys of Okocim. Lovely Polish beer, which we later learned is pretty damn strong.

After a little while a guy from behind the bar came over to speak to us. He brought some incense sticks with him and passed them out to a few of us. Then he had a change of heart and took them all off us to give them all to Phil Beard. Phil was naturally quite grateful for this honour.

We had a few more drinks and then I spotted a Polish book with my name in the title. I couldn’t read it, so I put it back on the bookcase and went to get more Okocim from the bar. While I was at the bar the guy who’d spoken to us earlier gave me a small square of bubble wrap. I didn’t really know what for, so I thanked him and took it back with the drinks. There I found that he’d given everyone some. I think the fact that we’d all been deprived of sleep and provided with so much alcohol we decided it’d be a great idea to pull stupid faces with the bubble wrap and have our pictures taken.

We originally planned to stay in the bar until it got light, but by the time 6:30 arrived we abandoned that plan and just walked back to the hotel to get some sleep.

10:20 arrived very quickly and we had to get up to look around Krakow. Some people had already wandered off in little groups because they had things to do in mind. A few of us hung back to have a bit more of a relaxing day. The main square we hung out in was really nice. There was a Christmas market selling the usual bits and bobs. Nothing you really need, but novelties that you buy anyway. We discovered the joys of “bread bangles” at the little vendors on the square, and then wandered off to the castle.

From the castle you can see quite a lot of Krakow. It was nice to look down at the river flowing by with the swans landing on it. We stood there for quite a few minutes just taking it all in before we moved on.

After the castle we headed into the Jewish quarter in search of some more nice architecture, and something good to eat. After Lizz got distracted in a little trinket shop (there was a cat on the sign so she couldn’t resist) we found Starka Restaurant and decided it looked nice. We took our seats and ordered some drinks. I decided a nice hot coffee would work wonders, so I ordered a Polish coffee. This was advertised as containing vodka and Kahlua, so I couldn’t resist. I was in for a bit of a surprise. When my drink finally arrived (10 minutes after everyone else’s) it was freezing cold, in a Martini glass, with a straw in it. I don’t think I could have looked any more gay if I’d been wearing a vest and leather trousers.

Once the drinks had arrived we all ordered food. I decided that the pork knuckle and pork neck weren’t particularly appetising, so I decided to have rabbit for the first time. Once the food arrived my silly drink was completely forgotten. Rabbit wrapped in bacon with honey glazed carrots, and other tasty vegetables is one of the most outstanding meals I have ever eaten.

We headed back to the main part of town after a brief visit to a pharmacy for Lizz to get some painkillers. We met back up with Gordon in Cafe Philo after witnessing a little protest complete with music march through the city centre. A few of us hung out there and others nipped back to the hotel to sort things out. Claire asked the hotel to book us in for a meal at a nice Polish/Italian restaurant in the evening.

When we went there they showed us to our very own little room with a huge table in it. It seemed really cool, but a couple of people weren’t particularly bothered, so after a bit of discussing we all left the restaurant. A couple of people decided to get food from the Christmas market instead, so while they were doing that Gordon, Sarah, and I decided we fancied grabbing a kebab from a place Gordon had discovered earlier in the day. I’m glad I went with it, as it was really nice. It was very spicy though, and I don’t normally eat particularly spicy foods.

After the kebab we went looking for a bar to hang out in. We went into a little bar and decided to have Desperado’s (beer flavoured with tequila) based on being reliably informed that they’re nice. They are nice.

We moved on to this fairly big Irish bar and had a few more beers in there. I decided to sing along to Pearl Jam – Alive, much to the amusement of Gordon and Sarah. I also stole a flower from the vase in front of me and wore it behind my ear for the next couple of hours. We also got in a conversation with a man in a kilt after I applauded him for wearing it when he walked in.

As it got later we decided we should head back to Cafe Philo for the rest of the night. When we got there basically everyone else on the trip was there. We all hung out having many drinks and laughs until the early hours of the morning. By the time the last of us left it was down to Jo, Claire (#2 in my book), Vlad, and me. It was somewhere around 3:30 or 4:30 in the morning, but I don’t really remember which any more.

We all got up pretty early on Sunday morning to get some breakfast and get ready to check out of the hotel. The plan for the day consisted of a walk to the train station so we could spend 2 hours on the train so we could visit Auschwitz. After a fairly lengthy walk from the train station we arrived at the main entrance to Auschwitz and checked our bags in so we didn’t have to drag them around the concentration camp.

Somehow I ended up by myself, so I just wandered around looking at the buildings for a little while. After looking at a couple of the displays in the buildings I decided I’d rather soak up the atmosphere from outside. It’s a very weird thing to be somewhere like that. Trying to imagine the things that had happened right where I was standing was difficult. It’s just so hard to comprehend such a huge event. Then to consider you’re standing right there, in the very spot. Most unusual.

I decided to grab some food and wait for everyone else to come back to the main entrance. When a few of us were back it was suggested that we should just get a taxi to the airport and save a lot of messing around with buses and trains. It was agreed, so we left for the airport straight from Auschwitz. Some people decided to wait a bit longer, so they arrived in dribs and drabs at the airport. While we were eating some food we spotted that our flight was listed as delayed. I’d never had a flight delayed before, so I wasn’t too pleased that I was about to experience it.

After checking in and going through security we sat down in the departures lounge waiting to find out more information. At first they said it would be an hour late, but it ended up being 2 hours late. I really regretted arriving so early by the end of that wait.

The flight home didn’t take too long, and on landing back in the UK I couldn’t believe that the whole thing was over with so quickly.

I just got an email from someone regarding my Petals Around the Rose Android app. It was the first app I made and is a very basic puzzle. I know it’s not the best thing in the world, by any stretch of the imagination, but it was quite a good test for building my first app.

Here’s the email:

On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 2:07 PM, tawana ******** wrote:
It is a stupid game

You can imagine how pleased I was to receive this feedback via email. So here’s my reply:

Hi Tawana.

Well, thanks very much for taking the time to insult me and the effort I put in. It’s greatly appreciated.

Do you have anything you’ve created and given away for free that I can make fun of? If not then you’re not really in much of a good position to be insulting me, and I suggest you spend some time contributing rather than knocking those who are.

Go fuck yourself,
Stuart.

P.S. I took the liberty of searching for you a little bit online and I believe I’ve found your Twitter account: http://twitter.com/sexygirl****** which gives me the following location: 40.******,-73.****** which is in *********, NY. Is this correct?

I hope she replies.

I received a notification from a user last night saying that there were problems sending remote record requests because of a login issue. I just wanted to update to say that I have replicated the problem with my own account, and so I plan to work on fixing this issue this evening, as soon as I get home.

Based on a tiny bit of checking I think it should be a fairly trivial fix, but that’s without knowing the true details of the problem.

I will update again when I know more, and will get a working version on the Android Market as soon as possible.

Apologies for the down-time.