Captain Doug in the 25th Century

I’m going to take stock at this, the start of 2010 (which I’m saying as twenty ten, or occasionally two thousand and twenty ten).

For 2010 I plan to:

Go to Hong Kong and Singapore – this will be my first trip to Asia, so that’s neat

Exercise on a weekly basis – I’m thinking swimming, as an indoor, solo type of exercise that works most of the bod-ay and will allow me to show off my sweet pecks

Buy a games console – I’m leaning toward a Wii and am resolved to get this as soon as money allows which is likely to after the expensive Asia holiday and getting the garage to have a look at my car.

Get the cinematic epic Giant Gorilla vs. Mega Shark vs. Epic Octopus vs. Ultra Bear a step closer to the big screen by having a more detailed go at the storyline – it turns out that ejay really doesn’t get on well with vista and they’re not making any new ones so I need to find a new music making software package before I can lay down the soundtrack, which really sucks

Blog more – fortnightly would be reasonable. [Also, can you believe that Firefox has spelling mistake red lined blog? Also Firefox. This browser is self contradictory! I'm using Firefox to write in my blog and the damn thing is freaking out!! Argh!]

Grow my hair a bit longer, get it cut for Asia and maybe be blond in the summer – Outrageous!

Ok, that’s enough ambition for now. Have a nice year.

Asia, Exercise, First, GSOB, Hair, Wii

It occurs to me that I totally forgot to blog my first international business trip.

Long story short… went to Prague for a Food Analysis conference.
Left with a cold, air pressure on the plane crushed my plastic water bottle and my stuffed up head.
Was deaf for the first night.
Nearly fell asleep in some lectures, but survived most and met many people who
a) Are smarter than me in English
b) Also speak like 3 other languages

I stand here humbled.

Or not, whatever.

Got back fine and brought Prague biscuits for everyone. Hooray me!

Which brings me to the second of my international business trips.
We left Chester and headed to Telford to view our printers (that is, the people who print the magazine).
The Sat Nav took us cross country coz they always seem to do that and I was enjoying the scenery to much to complain.
I totally saw a sheep telling another sheep a secret. Or perhaps he was cleaning the other guy’s ear. Hard to tell, but they looked shifty so I’m on the look out for a secret sheep plan. Oh what a time to live in Wales! Although being fair I’m maybe half a kilometre away from sheep right now and that’s pretty much standard for most of the times I’ve lived in the countryside.

The printers was cool though.
Seems the more automated everything gets the more like a giant train set it becomes. as well as conveyor belts of a variety of sizes everywhere, there were tracks in the floor, with turntables and even little skateboards that the definitely-not-Umpa-Lumpas who work there push all the paper around on.

I did not shout “STOP THE PRESSES!”, which is good coz apparently that is quite an expensive thing to do.

All in all a success.

Huzzah.

International business trips, Secrets, Sheep, Trains

I’ve been clearing out my blog’s comments thread. It has a spam catcher of some kind that holds dodgy sounding comments so I can give them the go ahead if I wanna post them.

Recently there’s been a massive influx of Russia spam (well, spam in the Cyrillic alphabet, I can’t tell if they’re actual words or not) and a couple that moved me to blogging.

I received two of these. Both from Barack Obama. (I left the links in for authenticity, but changed the destinations that the no one gets spammed)

I stand here today humbled by the task before dofus kamas, grateful for the trust you have bestowed, mindful of the sacrifices borne by our cheap dofus kamas. I thank President dofus for his service to buy dofus kamas, as well as the generosity and cooperation he has shown throughout this transition.

Mr President, what an honour!

Can you believe it?! The President of those United States wants me to buy dofus kamas!

That’s very exciting because I can’t believe he reads my blog.

spam

So I’m wondering how I stand, geek wise.

There’s been a fair amount of movement in either direction, you see, so I’m evaluating.

Well first off the move away from geek.

I am winning the fantasy football league at work. This is not just a one off; I did so well in the first week I’m actually hanging on at the top for week three. My competitive nature is even making me care about football. I was unhappy that Liverpool lost and even used the phrase “get in”, when I found out some team had won.

Oh it’s a sad state of affairs. Fortunately this weekend saw a huge swing back into the geek camp:
I went camping with some friends, one of them had DC comics pyjamas and some people didn’t know who the symbols represented. Sure Batman and Superman are pretty obvious, but they didn’t know who the Green Lantern was. I fixed it by reciting the Green Lantern Oath:

It was extremely sunny after we had left the cars and gone for food. I got back and climbing into the car, successfully cried out “Hammer of Thor it hot in here!” It may have been the least spectacular of my examples, but has the bonus of being a line discussed while I was in Scotland the weekend before. While watching the Sword of Xanthen (don’t ask for more details, it’s just what it sounds like), it became a running gag in the group that the perfect fantasy, Lord of the Rings style chat up line should be some variation on “Have you heard of the Hammer of Thor?” before launching into the innately saucy story of Viking gods.

This line was actually used multiple times in the film to great success, but I did not try it out over the camping trip because I forgot. I did however (and this is the icing on the cake) get into an argument about baldness, and list cool bald people. Patrick Stewart was naturally at the top of the list. People complained about Star Trek. I decided that with my impression of his Shakespearian voice, this monologue would make a fantastic chat up line, or better; sweet nothing to be whispered delicately… but commandingly.

If anyone knows a better geek chat up line than these two I haven’t heard it.

And no Chris, just saying “I’ll get my cloak and Wizard hat” at each other over and over doesn’t count.

So yeah, three weeks at the top of the office fantasy football league gets me cool kid points, with a x3 combo multiplier.

Unfortunately, repeated attempts to use the Star Trek monologue in a sexy voice, that darn hammer and a perfect rendition of the Green Lantern oath puts me back where I started.

In other news, I plan on using the phrase “Right on” more often

Football, Geek, Green Lantern, Hammer, Star Trek, Thor

You know what’s amazing?

Toothpaste.

I was running out so I went and bought more (this, to clarify, is not the amazing part), there were like billions of choices, but I managed a decision and got the replacement tube home and waited for the apparently empty tube to finally die.

That was weeks ago.

This tube is hanging on like a crazy thing.

I am getting to be quite amazed.

It must be like the tardis in there, only full of toothpaste.

Or (if nobody else’s toothpaste tubes do this) perhaps I’m magic?

I could be like the guy that went round after Jesus fed 30,000 people fish sandwiches, who made sure they all had minty fresh breath with one tube of paste.

Hmm, I do have very cool sandels/official Haynes flip flops.

Could I get in trouble for claiming myself to be a/the dental messiah?