Passing Time #14

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Also will only make sense to people that watched Powerpuff Girls & Samurai Jack!

Sleepy Time #15

Now, I know I've not done one of these posts for a while, but then, there's not really been anything to report. If you remember, when I started out, the sleep-times were 0200-0600, and the first week, that was easy peasy.

Lemon squeezy, in fact.

After that, it went from 0100-0600 and that, shall we say, was a little harder. My body was not a happy chappy. Some nights I would toss and turn for half an hour, then have to get up (as I'm only allowed to spend 30 minutes trying to sleep) and go sit downstairs for half an hour, then go back up - so back up to bed for 2am. Some nights, the opposite would happen - I would doze off without any hassle, but then wake up around 5am, and not get back to sleep...

And until I can sleep the 0100-0600 without any issues for a solid week without any issues, I don't get to add my additional hour.

Monday is that magical day. Assuming I sleep tonight and tomorrow night without any hiccups, Monday I get to change to 0000-0600. Now, that might not sound like a lot to most of you normal "Sleepers" but to any insomniac out there, I bet you cash-money they would give ME cash-money to sleep in such a big block.

I knew this was going to be tough, and I have very nearly thrown in the towel many times. I haven't, though, simply because I WANT to have a relatively normal sleeping pattern. I was impressed when I started, sleeping for 4 hours at a time - that, to a proper insomniac is like a chocolate-covered virgin.

And when I say "Proper Insomniac" I mean those of us that don't sleep MOST nights. The ones that go to bed at say 2230, toss and turn for a while, read for a bit, have a wander, have a drink, toss and turn, doze off for three nanoseconds, wake up for a while, toss and turn, fiddle with the phone, tweet about how tired you are, toss and turn and then, finally, doze off for 40 minutes only to have to get up for school/work or whatever.

Those of you that wake up every now and then at 3am, jump out of bed, play on the Playstation, and tell the world about your awful insomnia, go back to sleep at 5am, get up at 10am, and then have a nap in the middle of the day - once in a blue moon - you're not insomniac.

So, yes, this is definitely working and despite being a hard slog, I am winning. If you had told me a couple of months back that I would be sleeping in constant blocks of four and then five hours, I'd have laughed at you.

The hard part is every other waking hour though. I am pretty much running on autopilot for the most part, and staying awake during the day is proving tough, but there are enough people around that enjoy lobbing a pillow at me and yell "Incoming!" as they do so to prevent me sleeping during the day. Evenings are rough too - especially trying to watch things I want to watch... I had to re-watch two of the three episodes of Sherlock, I have had to rewatch several episodes of House and Big Bang Theory simply because I was nodding off throughout the whole program.

Kellie has - on a couple of occasions - stayed downstairs with me till 1am. When I say "Stayed downstairs" and not "Stayed up with me" what I really mean is, she's slept on the sofa beside me, and I've had to wake her up to come to bed at 1am.

While it's novel that we "go to bed together" the conversation IS lacking while she's down here. Unless I just make up her side of it every time she snores, in which case, she doesn't shut up talking!

The side effects are still mostly present, but I am ignoring them as best I can. The worst one - aside from nodding off at the drop of a hat regardless of what I am doing - is seeing things out the corner of my eye. It's so distracting, it's not even funny. I also have moments where I've not "fallen asleep" but my brain has shut off for a minute or two an started dreaming, and when it reboots, I have to concentrate for a few moments to work out if what happened actually happened, or if it was me making it up unconsciously.

(Geek Paragraphs Start!)
Playing WoW to stay awake is also comedy gold. I can be playing normally, then my brain will start randomly dozing off/waking up in thirty second blocks. So I can kill a creature, loot it, run towards the next to kill it... And then wake up, to find my finger still on "Run Fowards" my health on half, and every mob with that was in the area chasing me and hitting me in the spine.

Playing in Outland is even MORE amusing... Kill mob, loot mob, run towards mob... Wake up dead having fallen off the edge of the world. I've done THAT several times now. And flying - I will jump on my flying mount to go from Point A to Point B... And wake up on the other side of the zone. Night before last, it took FOUR attempt to fly from A to B, and mid-way through each flight I dozed off, thus moving Point A - the starting point - to a different place every time.
(Geek Paragraphs End)

Even blogging or texting can prove interesting to do. I was texting Posh Totty the other night, but halfway through every message, my brain shut down - and I'd open my eyes to find that despite the brain being dead, the fingers were still active, and the message would be something like

"Oh I'm OK, just very tired, and after cooking chilli forn sihfdsg asdi3 inf qfubsdgpihdf ojfub"

And stranger still - I would have forgotten WHAT I was saying. So I'd have to go back, re-read her original message, delete mine and start over - sometimes having nothing to do with what I've written. It's like that in the brief moment of time I was asleep, the brain was trying to flush out all the stuff it could get rid of as quickly as it could, for whatever reason - kind of like when you're in a rush, deleting files off your hard drive, and all of a sudden, Windows crashes as that last one was a system file...

I can see now how people driving while exhausted can cause accidents. In the past, I've just assumed that when they talk about "Driving Tired" I believed they meant simply because when you're tired, your reaction times are slower. If my own experiences are anything to go by, you can't just say "Oh I'll be fine, I'll keep myself awake" because you don't actually know you're dozing off until you wake up and realise "Oh I dozed off" which is quite scary.

The brain, it would seem, does not like to be forced to stay awake, and in a power struggle of Doing Stuff vs. It Wanting Sleep - you lose every time.

Anyways, fingers crossed that I sleep "properly" for the next couple of nights. Midnight til Six might sound like the opening hours to a pretty good club, but it is an even more appealing sleep schedule!

Understatement...

I have just seen the following paragraph on Sky News, relating to the sinking of the Costa Concordia. As I read it - this one single paragraph - I couldn't help but shake my head:

Passengers aboard the Costa Concordia have been offered €11,000 (£9,184) compensation for lost baggage and psychological trauma after the ship deviated from its route, hit a rock and capsized.

Now, in regards to the compensation, I am sure most will not see that as enough, and bet your their bottom dollar, everyone takes their arses to court for more. The fact they are trying to settle so quickly says to me that they want as many to accept NOW and not have time to think about it.

Secondly, "Psychological Trauma" - is that posh speak for OhFuckWe'reGoingToDie while stood on a ship that is blatently sinking, but the crew don't seem to know what's happening.

Next, "Deviate from its route" - I suspect that is polite terminolgy for "The Captain is a Knobhead that was showing off and instead of being four miles off the coast, was 300 yards off the coast" PLUS it seems to suggest the ship itself did it, not someone in charge showing off.

The last bit is the one that makes me properly chuckle - "hit a rock" Now, a rock, to me, is what the girls stash in their bedroom when they find pretty ones. This thing in the side of the ship does not constitute "a rock"

Let's take a look at a picture of this "rock" shall we:

Now, to REALLY appreciate this, you need to click that to embiggen it. See that big, long diagonal surface? The little black thing about half-way along, that is a PERSON. Saying this is "a rock" is like saying the blast at Hiroshima was "a bit noisy"

And that's just the part of it we can SEE... Goodness knows how much is IN the ship.

As you can tell, I'm a little loopy on my meds and exhaustion this afternoon. But, being that I am a kind soul, I shall re-write the paragraph for Sky..

Passengers aboard the Costa Concordia have had a measly €11000 (£9184) bribe offered to them to get them to shut up, under the guise of compensation for losing their shit, and for having the absolute bejeezers scared out of them after the ship was piloted by a complete idiot without half a brain cell, who then proceeded to attempt to dent the planet with his little boat, and ultimately managed to flip the bastard over.  Twat.

Granted, it may not be short and sweet, but it IS to the point. Otherwise, it would read

LOL company bribes passengers after their captain nearly killed them by crashing their ship by trying to go off-road

Yes, bored. Tired. Paining.

Arbitrary Numbers

Over the years on the internet, I have come to the conclusion, that people put an awful lot of stock in various numbers that have precisely no bearing on anything.

At all.

And over the last few years, I've noticed that instead of people realising such numbers have no bearing on anything, it has, instead, gotten worse.

Whether you're on Faceook, Twitter, another "social" site, any form of Blogging site, forums - whatever it is, you will find people that are obsessed with certain numbers, as though they mean something.

On Facebook, it's number of friends, and they add strangers they've browsed and found, either through clicking through Likes, or Friends-of-Friends, or Area or whatever. "Oooh I've got 941 friends on Facebook!" they will proclaim at a party. Yeah love (because they are USUALLY females) but how many do you actually KNOW?!

Personally, I have about 300. Sometimes it drops to 280, but rarely goes much above 300. And I can say, hand on heart, I know MOST of these people. They might be family, local friends, heart parents, gamers - but I've spoken to them all either vocally or emailly at some point, at length. Those I DON'T know on my friends list are invariably the friend-of-a-friend that I've accepted, but will remove at a later date when clearing up.

Twitter is the bloody-awful Number of Followers. "Just 27 more people till 1000, please spam all your friends and get your friends to be my friends!" is the usual spam de jour, but there are other tactics. I don't understand why it matter if you have X, Y or Z followers. And I suspect a lot of these "People" are actually spam-bots that follow them, collecting their tweet contents and sending the appropriate crap at them via another account...

I have managed to get up to 93 followers. Yesterday I broke 100, but deleted the spambots and people that clearly don't use twitter. Why? Because I want to have actual followers, not just a random number of computers that follow me. Same with the people I FOLLOW. I don't click every celebrity, every cause, every person that asks for followers - the people I follow, I want to read their random stuff. If someone doesn't tweet for over a month, I delete them too.

There are others out there that are so intent on getting their number of followers up, they will do almost ANYTHING to get attention, and in the long run, it's just BAD. It looks bad, it sounds bad, and if someone researches you in the future, and come across "Every 100 followers, I will randomly DM one of them my boobs!" how do you think that will look?

How do you think it will look if that person happens to be your CHILD?

My biggest Twitter-related bugbear is Number of Tweets. There are those that seem to think this is an all-important goal in life, to get this number as high as you can. Some post crap constantly. I mean over and over and over, every three minutes watching a TV program, every twenty paces when out walking, every third bite in a restaurant. There are others that have apps that report their activity on various sites or similar, so-and-so liked this, so-and-so did that, so-and-so watch the other...

Now, don't get me wrong, I have been guilty of this when I used Foursquare, but realised fairly quickly A) every time I checked in, Twitter got spammed, and B) What EXACTLY was the point, aside from letting burglars know I was out? And my solution? I removed it. As usual, I am not naming names, but there are some people that will spend an hour or two on some sites, and their every action is reported to Twitter.

Twitter Jail exists - if you tweet more than 100 times an hour, or 1000 times in a day, your account gets locked down and you can no longer tweet. I've never been, but know lots of people that have. And I'm sorry, if you're sending 1.6 tweets per minute, then you deserve to be blocked for a time. If the jail didn't exist, I would unfollow you.

But all these things - the spamming, TV blow-by-blow, the apps, the random crap - these all count as "Number of Tweets" which some seem to see as a badge of honour, but I really don't get why. I could quite easily rack up a massive number here, because invariably, during the day, I have more free time than most. But do I? No. Because it would piss me off - and cause me to unfollow - people that do it. As it it, I have a few people I am considering unfollowing already.

Yes, I use Twitter a fair amount, but not to the point I've lost followers after having a 20 minute conversation on there.

The list, to be honest, is endless, but my point is not. You can churn out posts, forum entries, blog posts, tweets, have millions of friends or whatever - but it should be about Quality as opposed to Quantity. Sure you might follow 7000 people, but how many can you have a decent conversation with? Yes, you might have done 12000 tweets in three months - but were they worth reading? Great, you've got 1000 friends, but how many of them are your FRIENDS? Yes, I might only have 300 friends spread around the globe, but I know if I need help with something, there's someone there that will be willing to help. I know if I need someone to talk to, someone that understands will be just a few clicks away.

If you are really shallow enough to think these numbers mean something, then by all means carry on. However, if you try bragging or "bigging yourself up" over these numbers - especially in front of me - you will get laughed at and most probably mocked.

Play on the web, do and say what you like, just don't be so wrapped up in these completely arbitrary numbers that you end up pissing everyone else off or worse, embarrassing yourself.

Or even worse - making ME embarrass you ;)

It Writes Itself...

Justin Bieber.
Holding a microphone to a robot-crotch.
Smiling and looking on with a disturbing expression.
While holding a microphone to a robot-crotch.

It's not ME, is it? There is something just weird about all this? I know the context the photo was taken in, however, it's Justin Bieber, holding his mic to the crotch of a robot. LOOK at his face! It's almost "Yes, my pretty, yeeeees... Sing for me little robo-penis..."

Just... Wow...

Passing Time #13

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0ddness is, for want of a better description, my little nook of the Internet. It is something that, while I don't always use it, it's MINE, my own little thing for me to do as I please on here.

I occasionally think about doing something to make money with it, or using it as a place to churn out my creative writing ideas, or as a place to properly rant and rave about various things, but in the end, I decide I love my little blog as it is. I'm not hugely worried about visitor numbers (though would like more comments so I know people are ACTUALLY reading!), I don't think it'd ever make money, and I don't think 90% of you would give two figs reading about fantasy-adventure type stuff.

So, this morning, imagine my surprise and I have to admit, horror, when She Of The Posh Persuasion sent me a message telling me my site was showing nothing but a little text, and a picture of a dog...

"Bwa-huh?" may have been the actual sound that fell out of my mouth when I read that message. So, even as I was in the process of putting down my phone, loading Firefox and clicking on my link, She Of The Short Persuasion sent a similar message, but HER messaged used the work "Hacked"

Now, instead of "Bwa-huh?" it was more "shitshitshitshitshit" thinking someone had gotten into my stuff and possibly deleted said-stuff.

I clicked on my link to take me to 0ddness, and imagine the feeling of my heart falling down through my body, bumping into every other organ on the way down to my feet when 0ddness was displaying like so:

Fuuuuu...

While in the process of dropping into my toes, my brain - which, let's be honest, has been dozing of late - woke up and stopped the heart mid-Geronimo. "Duh -" said my Brain "-that's James' dog..." James being of the He Who Kicks Boxes And Burglars Given The Chance.

See, during the Great Gimme Gizmo Rant of 2011 and the subsequent Great Censoring of 2011, James got me to switch from a shitty company over to another that actually defend their customers to voice their opinions without fear of getting smacked bums. Being that he already had an account, we just slapped 0ddness, KelliesWorld, Kellies-Kards and our not-yet-done Wedding Blog over to 1and1.

Now, from what I could gather was that something was changed this morning - according to the WhoIs records. The Posh One thought I had renewed the blog, but it's not due for renewal till next year. However, WhoIs showed that it had been "updated" today.

The only thing I could see different was the Name Servers. Now, I am NOT particularly great with Domains, DNS and such like, but after switching away from Shitty Company, the blog Name Servers remained wedged firmly with the original company, and not 1and1.

Very 0dd.

However, upon checking the morning (and I don't check very often) they were now showing 1and1 name servers. Huzzah.

However, in my huzzah'ing, it would appear that this was the root of the issue. And I had to re-do all the DNS stuff. On James' account. Where he appears to host proper websites. The sort that make money. That have customers.

No pressure then.

So, I went through, did the step-by-step and got it sorted. 1-24 hours to notice a change though. Great. 0ddness would be down for a while.

All day, I've been CTRL+F5'ing the page, refreshing the page from the host as opposed to the cache, and finally, just before 3pm, 0ddness came back to life. I got on Twitter & Facebook, and had the Great Unwashed check for me from their side, and apparently, it's all back and up and happy.

And I am now breathing sighs of relief. Granted, it's only 0ddness & KelliesWorld that has come back on so far, but I'm sure the others will sputter back into functionality sooner rather than later.

Now I've just double checked, and the Wedding Blog and KelliesKards are also back online. Huzzah once more!

I'm glad people noticed, though. I'm glad someone pointed out to me there was a problem with the blog. I know my readership (Ha! Readership...) are quite loyal and will point out when something is broken, but I'm glad it was done quickly.

Just after 1100 this morning, it was working fine. Adullamite was on there, read my Musical Monday, commented, done. 1150, Posh messages me, dog on your site, followed rapidly by Em for the same reason.

As a sidenote and addendum to this post, this happening is actually GOOD news... Why?

Because it now means my Domain Name is firmly OFF of Shitty Company's servers, computers, records and everything else...

So?

It means that all my previous Gimme Gizmo/DRW posts are going BACK on the blog. It means that all your comments, all the people that took the time to message me - they are all going BACK on the blog.

I get regular visits from people searching for information on Gimme Gizmo/DRW, and now the company that tried to censor me is out of the picture, they are going back on there.

Later, though, because it is taking every ounce of energy to write this coherently! hehe

Musical Monday #126 - Guilty

Today, I am mostly suffering from Earworm. Which means that the subject of my Musical Monday post has to be that song, for the simple fact I cannot think of any other songs for the time being.

To be fair, I do love this song. I've had it for ages, but haven't listened to it in a long time, so why it's in my head is beyond me. And no, I'm not feeling - as the title suggests - guilty.

I had to have a quick dig around, because while I know I first heard it on a movie soundtrack, I can't for the life of me remember which one. I believe it was either Mortal Kombat the movie, or Se7en, another brilliant film.

Whichever, this is still a great track, and everyone needs a bit of hard rock first thing on a gloomy Monday morning!!

Bloody Song!

As I have mentioned once or twice on 0ddness, it is a very common occurrence for me to have a song stuck in my head. Sometimes it's a bit of a song, sometimes it's an entire song. It can be a song I like or a song I hate. My brain is not fussed.

Earworm, is the correct term, as discovered last year after pottering around on Ze Google for a while. I'd be lying if I said my head is usually devoid of something playing, and the kids have caught on to this and most days ask what song is stuck in the old grey noodle.

This morning at approximately 0602 while I was leaving the bedroom, my head starting playing one such song, and now, at 0033 it is STILL playing. I had a quiet morning - song played over and over. I had a busy afternoon - song carried on. We went to the Future 0dd Mother in Law - carried on there too. Late evening, while chilling, it carried on over and around and over...

So, with just under thirty minutes left in MY day, I decided to share it with you, dear reader. Those of you on normal timezone probably won't hear this till the morning, and HOPEFULLY most of you will suffer as much as I have for eighteen hours.

Those of you outside the UK, there's a good chance the only time you have ever heard of Right Said Fred is with their song I'm Too Sexy... This one, I can honestly say, I have not heard for years. Years and years. Yet here it is, running around in the noggin.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Deeply Dippy...

Hyping It Up

Let me start this post by saying that at no time, in any way, am I belittling the accident that occurred with the Costa Concordia, nor the circumstances surrounding what happen to the ship nor the people.

That said, would people please get a grip, and engage that thing buried deep, deep inside your skull, and stop comparing this ship falling over to the Titanic! And for the love of all things boat-like, we don't need to know that "the anniversary of the Titanic sinking is in X months" because the ONLY similarity between the two, is that they both count as ships.

That's IT.

One hit an iceberg and sank. The other hit the sea floor and landed on its side.
One was a disaster that killed over 1500 people. The other is an accident that may have killed less than 50.

Yes, don't get me wrong, the Costa Concordia sinking - if you can even call it that - is a bad thing to happen to anyone, and the deaths of passengers and crew is truly sad, but to compare it to one of the worst maritime accidents ever is just wrong. The fact that it is now very apparent that the captain is a bit of a cock and was showing off means this was a wholly avoidable accident. Instead of being 400 yards off the coast, he should have been several MILES off the coast.

I've heard people ranting that "Oooh but he saved so many MORE lives by getting the ship closer to shore" but I'm sorry, that doesn't cut it. That's like me torching an orphanage, then running in to save some of the kids.

Wholly Avoidable.

Yes, I hear you cry, it could have been worse. Much worse. And the passengers are saying conditions were crap with the evacuation and that the angle of the boat meant they couldn't launch life rafts and so on and so on... It could have been worse, however, had the Captain done what he was supposed to have been doing - IE, sailing in deep water, not waving at an island - then it wouldn't have happened.

I don't get why they have to compare it to the Titanic. Why not, say, The Herald of Free Enterprise, back in the 80s? That killed almost 200 people. Or how about the one - also in the 80s - that killed over 4000 people when a ferry and a tanker collided? I just don't get why the media need to hype stuff up. Is it to make things seem worse than they are? It is what it is, an accident in it's own right. I just wish the news would stop trying to fluff the story into stupid levels.

Cruises do NOT appeal to me. The thought of being in the middle of the ocean, on board something the size of a small village that is floating... No thanks. Yes, all the amenities might be on hand, but then, they are on hand pretty much where ever you go for holidays.

I am hoping that the events that transpired up to and during the accident are covered quickly, and the appropriate legal sentences are handed out to those responsible. The salvage operation should be interesting, but remember, it's a shipping accident in it's own right, and has nothing to do with the Titanic.

That is all.

Thieving Scum

As I alluded to in the beginning of this post, there are some shitty bloody people in the world. However, at the time of writing, I did not have permission from both parties involved to blog it, so in a properly Grown Up Dan moment, I held off post.

I now have that permission.

On the night of Thursday 12th and the early hours of Friday 13th January, our friends Kerry & James were burgled. People broke into their home, and took their stuff.

While they, three kids, and a baby all slept upstairs.

Now, despite the fact I am being very calm and collected on here, I am very pissed off with this situation. First off, the fact that two of our very best friends have had to rearrange their lives because of the selfish acts of others is bad enough. The upside is, they got the bastards. How did they know who it was?

Turns out it was the 15 year old kid who lives directly opposite them. And, I should add, it's not like here, where there's a road in between. This is a little square of houses.

I don't know the full and exact details, and despite them telling me what happened, I am going from sleep-addled memory from this point onwards.

After Kerry & James turned in for the night, the little shit broke in. I don't know the details as to HOW he managed it, but he did - and apparently, may have had one or two others with him. Knowing that they were asleep upstairs, he kept his sticky little fingers to the stuff DOWNSTAIRS, and grabbed a laptop, a DSi, a very expensive camera, Kerrys handbag - which had purse, money, phone and stuff inside...

Then, he decided to take the car keys.

With his armload of stuff, he left the house and probably dumped it at his own home twenty feet away, and got in the car. A people carrier, we've all affectionately referred to as the Fun Bus since forever. And he proceeded to go for a joyride.

Off Canvey Island, down the A13, where he pulled into Tescos at Pitsea, spent money (I don't know if it was their money or his own...) and put £20 of petrol in the car, only to drive it BACK to Canvey, and then decided in their idiot bloody wisdom, to try and squeeze the very large Fun Bus between two metal barriers and take it off road.

They hit it with such force, the bus lifted and wedged into place. And there it stuck.  So next plan?

Well obviously they headed back to Kerry & James' home and took the other set of keys. This time, they wanted James work van which had asbestos-analysing equipment in the back. Around the island, off the island, to Tesco again, fill it up again, then go back and around the island.

You really have to wonder at how smart this idiot really was. Having got the bus stuck in a metal gate, they decided they STILL wanted to go off-road, so headed for the recreational grounds. In order to stop people pitching caravans illegally on these grounds, there is a heavy earthworks all around them. They decided to try driving OVER said-earthworks.

Now, these are designed to prevent vehicles getting onto the fields, and they work. The numpty managed to grind the bottom of the van into the ground and for the second time in one night with SOMEONE ELSES PROPERTY managed to wedge the van into a position where it was stuck.

And here's a strange twist... Elsewhere on Canvey, James' mum was stirring. She is an early riser, and is out at the butt-crack of dawn walking the dogs with a friend. So, wandering through the silent Canvey, she was surprised to hear music blaring ahead. Upon investigation, she found a green people carrier, lights on, doors open, music blaring - wedged in some metal gates at a strange angle.  Now, like any person finding such a thing, she called the police and reported a car stolen, giving the number plate and description.

Later that morning, James has called his mum to let her know what had happened. Eventually, the lightbulb came on, and she told James about the Fun Bus.

The final joke? The car number plate is her own sons initials, being that it's a personalised plate!

Doh!

So, back to the narrative...

James & Kerry have since had a new front door, a complete burglar alarm, a door open/closed signal sound, and have replaced the Fun Bus. However, the items stolen are gone. Rumour has it James Xmas present - a very nice digital camera worth a LOT of money - was sold on for £40.

Now it's time to deal with the obvious parts. For one, having someone in your house, going through your stuff - especially while you're asleep upstairs - is hard to deal with. The fact they've taken your things and things belonging to the kids is just wrong. Equally bad if not worse, is that fact the little scrote responsible is a neighbour - someone they see every day. Kerrys eldest used to play with the kid responsible - and 15 IS a kid.

The police, despite knowing who it was, took their time making any arrests, and I can only imagine they were collecting information and evidence to present when they did finally pull him off the streets. Which means that Saturday night when we were over there, the little shit was sat in the living room of the house opposite.

It did seem strange and unfair, but as far as I know, he HAS since been arrested. I don't know what punishment he will get but according to a source, this kid has a loooong list of crimes which means hopefully this is the one that will get him plonked away somewhere for a while.

You have to wonder at both the mentality and audacity of this knob head. Audacity, because he's shitting where he lives, but mentality - he KNOWS James is a nationally rated kick boxer. Had James stumbled downstairs for a drink, I know for a fact that the little snot would be little more than a pile of actual snot.

And with the law over here now changed so that beating the shit out of - and even killing - home intruders isn't instantly punished with jail, the kid seriously needs to be locked up.

And yes, I am angry too.

Sleepy Time #14

It's been a few days since my last sleep-depriving blog entry, and I figured I should get caught up. A bit. I'm not entirely sure where I got to - aside from my first night of adding an hour, but none the less, I shall soldier on bravely.

It's been almost a week of 5 hours a night, but the first few nights were, shall we say, a bit of a bust. The first night of going to bed at 1am ended when my body woke me automagically at 5am - one hour earlier, and clearly it decided that as I was going to force it to sleep for 4 hours, no more, no less, then it would MAKE me wake up after four.

The night after was a bit disturbed. Not in a skinning-kittens-disturbed kind of way, but unsettled all night. We'd been out with friends, and there was a bit of an incident which ended up with Kellie and myself a little bit stressed out, so I suspect that has more to do with it than anything else.

Sunday night, I went up at one, and couldn't get to sleep, so had to get up after half an hour, and come back downstairs for half an hour. Upon returning to bed at 2am, I dozed off fairly quickly - only to have to get up again at six.

Monday night went fine going TO bed and TO sleep, but my body woke me at 5am once again, so once again I only had four hours of sleep.

Tuesday and Wednesday, however, seemed to be better. Both nights I've gone up at 1am, gotten settled and dozed fairly quickly, and woken up normally at 6am.

As it's taking me a while to get settled into the 1-6 rhythm, I'm going to stick it out for at least a few more days (1am to 6am, not talking about ditching the whole thing) but I may well stick it out till next Friday, just in case.

The positive aspects of this, is mostly that it IS working. I am consistently sleeping right through the night, despite that night only being 4-5 hours long. It has been years since I was able to sleep in such large blocks, especially night after night after night. Even the night I was disturbed (again, not sacrificing kittens) I would wake up, fidget, get comfy, go back to sleep. Before, if I woke up in the night, I would be AWAKE, and toss and turn and not settle back down.

Nothing else has been changed. I've not added some magic oils to my pillows, nor have I changed my bedding, the side I sleep on, removed nor added anything from the room.

So, again, to those that were interested in doing this to help get out their insomniac regime, I cannot rate it more highly. If you're a shift worker (like Mr Insomniac Medic, our favourite paramedical bloggerer!) then I don't know what to suggest. A month off to do it, maybe? hehe

And now, for the downsides. Well, on the bright side, the downsides aren't awful downsides like, say, you'd get with medication. Nope, these downsides are the same ones I've been blogging about since I started. Exhaustion, dozing off at random, seeing things, lack of coordination, grumpy and taking things a little too personally, reduced reaction times...

ALL things associated with too little sleep, and if I am honest, most of them I had to some degree already after years of not sleeping. Yes, it might seem extreme to go this far and limit the hours I spend in bed, but, if you've never suffered properly with insomnia, you cannot grasp how it makes you feel. "I'm tired" is just a polite way of saying "I am so physically and mentally exhausted, that it is all I can do to speak, move and think. I feel sick with the tiredness, my body just wants to curl up and sleep..."

And medication is not an option for me. I don't want to be out of it for 8-12 hours a night. I don't want to take meds, then miss a sick child or something happening. If I need to wake up, then I need to wake up, be alert and be able to function.

But anyway. Yesterday was a very tired, whoozy, drowzy day. From about half ten yesterday morning, it was all Kellie could do to keep poking and prodding and shouting at me to stop me keeping my eyes closed for more than ten seconds. A few times I dozed off mid-conversation, once while holding a hot coffee, once while washing up... And a few times, I kept seeing people coming towards me out the corner of my eye - only for them to not be there a heartbeat later.

Yes, a little disconcerting, but I'll deal with it. I know they're not there and it's just my tired brain randomly firing off, but such is life. Hopefully, once I add the extra hour and get to six hours a night AND sleep through, things will start to change.

For today, however, I will just rely on my ten-minute alarms, and keeping as focused as I can!

Musical Monday #125 - Lose You

Once again in the world of Musical Mondays, I am late. Currently, it's Wednesday. Actually, it's Wednesday, and six minutes to Thursday.

Sue me.

However, I HAVE been sat doing sod all, and by "Sod All" I mean "Watching House MD"

There aren't many TV series that come on and I enjoy from start to finish. Some start good, get shit. Others start shit, and stay shit. Some start good, then end up cancelled. Those that start good, stay good - they're the ones that are few and far between.

So, we're loving House. It's great and all the rest of it.

However, being that it is well made, every now and then parts crop up that are emotional. The Kids-In-Hospital stuff still gets to me, but I know it's just TV and yadda yadda yadda. However, sometimes the story is enough that it drives Kellie to tears.

Spoiler Alert beyond this point. Skip through to the line of XXXX :D

When House was chosing his new team, we loved the character Kutner. Funny, smart, bit of a dickhead... And his character grew, and became brilliant. We settled in to the stories, into the plots and - oh, he's blown his brains out.

Season five, in the episode "Simple Explanation" THAT storyline was heart-wrenching. The whole team had to come to terms with his death, the why, and wondering what they missed. It was filmed differently too, and looked dark, foreboding...

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Kellie was fine, a bit choked up, right up to when the show started wrapping up, and a bit of music came on that was equally sad, complete with the expressions on the peoples faces... THAT pushed her over the edge.

The song, Pete Yorn - Lose You, is beautiful. You really should listen to it.

I’m taking a ride off to one side
It is a personal thing.
Where?
When I can’t stand
Up in this cage I’m not regretting.

I don’t need a better thing,
I’d settle for less,
It’s another thing for me,
I just have to wander through this world
Alone.

Stop before you fall
Into the hole that I have dug here,
Rest even as you
Are starting to feel the way I used to,
I don’t need a better thing
(Just to sound confused)
Don’t talk about everyone,
I am not amused by you.

I’m gonna lose you,
Yeah I’m gonna lose you
If I’m gonna lose you,

I’m gonna lose you,
Yeah I’m gonna lose you
If I’m gonna lose you
I’ll lose you now for good

An Ickle Round-Up

You may notice that 0ddness has been a bit quiet the last few days, and I have a very good reason. Well, a few good reasons. However, only one springs to mind with any real... Oomph.

I have got a terminal case of the Can't Be Arsed's. Not just with blogging (no, I'm not giving it up!) but in general, I just can't be arsed. It feels like so much has gone on in the last week - well, not even week - but this last week has been hard for some reason.

I suppose the main reason is the time of the year. Bethanys birthday is always rough, and this one deflated me a fair bit. I was a big boy, though. I didn't wallow, I didn't sulk, there were minimal tears, I kept busy and occupied and had Kellie holding my hand watching over me despite her being poorly...

The second reason is my sleeping routines. While I can categorically state it IS working, I am still on restricted sleeping hours. The time I am spending in bed is 95% sleep, 3% going TO sleep, and 2% getting up FROM sleep.

However, my body clearly realises now that it CAN sleep, so is doing everything it can to make me sleep.

On top of this, I have a rant about a news item (stupid bloody ship captain), I have a PROPER rant about thieving shitty burglars (not us, but someone close, and yes, I have permission to blog it), as well as a Musical Monday to catch up on.

Oh, and I should mention that while you cannot see it, two things are currently happening as I write this. Firstly, my body is trying to sleep, so my head is jerking too and fro and my eyes keep closing. Secondly, my hands aren't so much "typing" as they are "smooshing" the keyboard, which means despite the fact I am fixing them, there may well be some interesting typos or diabolical grammar.

So apologies for that...

Anyways, blog posts are in the pipeline, so bare with it.

11

Today, Bethany would have been 11 years old.

I am sitting here - as I have been since 6am this morning, thinking about my beautiful little girl, and without thinking about it, I've been wondering what she would be doing were she still here. I've been wondering what would she look like, how would she be, and what sort of plans would she be making...

I can't help it, and I've been trying to stay up-beat and happy, after all, today would be her birthday, and the last thing she would want, is for me to be sat here sad and upset. To be honest, she would probably kick me squarely on the shins if she knew how sad I was.

I've been trying to occupy myself - not forget, but keep my brain working on other things, but it's not worked. It doesn't help that I am so tired at the moment.

It kills me that she didn't make it past four. It cuts me like a knife that next month she would have been gone for seven years. SEVEN. It still feels like something that has only just happened.

But today is her birthday. Today, my beautiful, amazing, strong, brave Bethy would be eleven years old.

To my amazing big-little girl, my Bethy,

Happy birthday angel. I know where ever you are, you are probably having a great time. You've got Sally-Dog up there with you now, and I am sure you are drawing on her, or shaving her with the clippers, or generally running around like a pair of loons.

I miss you beautiful, every single day I think about you and all the amazing things you managed, even though you were so tiny. You touched so many people - people nearby, people around England, and people all over the world. You achieved amazing things, and bought so many people together.

But I miss you. I still wish I could have just one more cuddle, with you squeezing me tightly around the neck. I wish I could have one more kiss, you pressing your cold little lips hard against my cheek, then squealing in shock as you realise I've not shaved. I still see you swinging outside on the swings, or riding your little trike up and down the garden, or bumping down the stairs on your bottom.

I miss the sound of your voice, the sound of your giggle, your dirty little grin.

I wish I could give you a birthday kiss and cuddle today. I wish you were here to give Kellie a great big cuddle. You would adore her, and I am sure you approve of how great she is to me and your big brother and your little sister. Kellie loves you too, even though she never got to meet you. I hate that you two never met.

Happy birthday Bethany. I hope I dream of you tonight, and get one of your big cuddles while we sit on the stairs.

I love you my little angel, and yes, I still see you baby, shaking your ass..

With all my love,
-Daddy
x

For those of you that are new to 0ddness, Bethany was my little girl that was born with Congenital Heart Defects, and on the 21st February 2005, following a series of surgeries to correct her heart, she passed away. She was an amazing little girl that didn't flinch at any needle, any thought of surgery, and loved everyone completely and utterly. She was an amazing, wonderful, brave little girl, and I miss her every single day.

Halloween Angel...

Fishes on holiday

Beautiful little poser

Birth

Dr Bethy

Always smiling

My little fairy princess

Loving Pink Bear

My little Snow Angel