The Sony Ericsson K850i is BRILLIANT!

Hello readers and welcome to a late blog. And this week will mark a first for my blogging because not only am I going to blog what I HAVE been doing, I will attempt to blog what I WILL be doing 2 days in advance! (the reasons for which will become apparent.)

So. I begin with last Monday and the evening was spent in the Grevile with Adam, Marcus, Jo, Paul and Jenny. We had a good laugh and kept on laughing until home time, at about 11:30pm.

Tuesday, I found myself back over in Solihull, with John, at Adam and Marcuses house playing around on the ol' Xbox. Call of Duty 4 was the game, and It's one I have particular grievance with... I like the single player camaign very much (even if it is too short) but I never got on with the multiplayer. It was bland and I had my love of online gaming rooted in Halo 3... Never the less, I played on, hoping that my views would differ...

On Wednesday I went down to Fathers (No, actually Gemma, Ice Road truckers wasn't on! The series had finished! So there! yeah!.... Sorry... I got carried away for a moment...)

Thursday, and once again the Packhorse beckoned to me. Lank was/still is on his paddle boat somewhere adrift in the mid-atlantic enjoying himself, so he wasn't there. It was a good night (despite Mr Thomas' Phileas-Fogg-style antics) spent mostly on the games machine, answering questions about 14th Century Russia and the name of some prat form Hollyoakes!

Friday... Ah, the weekend was calling. In the evening I went down to Donnas house where they were having a bit of a party. There was food and drink and good conversation. I stayed until about 10:30pm before setting back off home.


Saturday was an interesting day. I got up and watched a few Dragonball Z episodes on the PC. nan and grandad arrived, along with Selena as usual so the wine came out. Now it is here I may need some help as i can't remember what I did in the Evening... Sorry.

Sunday. I spent the morning re-discovering Call of Duty 4! I put it in my xbox, and began playing. I was soon racking up the kills and ranks and had to admit that I had been far to harsh on the game the first time round...

Halo 3?

What's halo 3?

After lunch went to the legion. I came out of the legion a few hours later and headed down to my nans for tea!

Ah... Monday The first day of the holidays. I spent the day in the house, really, just messing about. Selena and Kieron came over for a while but left because they were going out. In the evening I found myself back over at Adams playing call of duty 4!

Tuesday. I got up and picked Donna up as we were heading in to Birmingham because I needed some new sunglasses and ski goggles and Donna needed a look round the shops and a memory-stick. We got to Birmingham (after a slight detour!) for late-morning and set about the BullRing. Donna had a mooch round before we went in to Currys and got her a 2Gb memory stich for £10.00. We then went and found Blacks. A sportsware shop up near House of frasier. I had a look at glasses and goggles before heading over to Snow and Rock to see what they had. Now usually they would be more expensive but they had a sale on and the prices were pretty decent. I eventually got what I needed and we left. I dropped Donna home and came home to play a bit of Call of Duty 4

Tuesday evening was pretty much the same deal as Monday, except that John had an ace up his sleeve. He had access to one of only 5000 passwords that allowed him to join the Battlefield: Bad Company Multiplayer Beta. He brought his hard Drive so we fired it up, and waited as the loading screen popped in to view...

... 20 minutes later we guessed that something was wrong, as we were still watching the loading screen! Wedecided to throw Call of duty back on for a bit before trying again...

... And got the same result! So no Battlefield: Bad Company Beta was played... Sorry.

Now today has been an interesting day... I got up and realised that, stupidly, I had left my phone at Adams from the night before so I went over to find Marcus at home. I got my phone and was going to come home when he suggested that we have a pint in the Greville. I agreed and off we went. After about 10 minutes Jackie (who I knew from college, and who I haven't seen since a random meeting in Tesco's about 2 years ago) walked in with 2 friends! We sat chatting and during the course of the conversation she mentioned that she still sees people from college and that Lesley (who is a great laugh, and whom I became good friends with) now works in Dorridge. I decided that since I hadn't seen her since graduation 4 years ago, it would be a surprise if I paid her a visit. After my pint (and lunch, because I was starving hungry) I set off to find Lesley. I found her! and we stood chatting about everyone and everything that has happened in the 4 years since we last met. After a good hour I came home and started blogging.

Now here is where is get diferent. You see I'm on Holiday from Friday for a week and so will attempt to blog up until this Friday so that when I blog next week I am up to date and can just tell you about skiing, complete with Photos and possibly video...

... Right. Here goes.

Tommorow will be a lazy day, exept for when I swap my currency to euro's and then pack for Austria. In the evening I will be down at the packhorse, enjoying myself (seriously, It feels weird to be blogging what hasn't happened yet!)

On the friday I will be rushing round sorting things out and making sure I have got everything before setting off for the Airport.

... Right! Done!

I will leave you there readers....

TTFN!

The Sony Ericsson K850i is RUBBISH!

Hello readers and welcome to a short blog. I say "short" because due to reasons I can't go in to, I'm not allowed to blog work anymore.

Monday evening came upon me and I went over to Adams (I think... Ooh heck, here we go again) and played a bit of the old Xbox.

Tuesday evening I think I went out... Possibly.

Wednesday evening was spent at fathers. I would have gone to the pub with Donna but she stayed in.

Thursday evening was spent in the packhorse. Lank wasn't there because he was on holiday.

Friday evening was spent in Birmingham with Donna and her mum and dad. Her Birthday was on the following day so they had decided to go for a meal at Wongs in Birmingham and invite me along... Which was nice!

The food was excellent and after the two courses they brought Donna cake out! Photos are below...

Cake, complete with Blue VW Beetle

Ms Pickard cutting her cake!

We left and I was dropped home for about 10:15pm. I came in and watched a bit of DragonBall Z before going to bed.

Ah Saturday. I got up and and went to Solihull to get Donnas Birthday presents. I got her some choccs and a desk ornament. When I came home I sat and watched some DragonBall Z before getting ready to go out to Solihull (again) for Donnas Birthday drinkage! Me and Benji got to Donnas and we got a lift in to Solihull with her mum (bless her cottons...)

We arrived in Wetherspoons and waited for everyone to arrive before setting off to Reflex for some Birthday dancing! We bopped away until the early hours before deciding we had better go home. I left with Donna and headed for the taxi queue. Whilst standing there a rather inhebriated girl and her friend staggered up behind us. One of them (thankfully the more attractive one!) decided I looked like the perfect way to hold herself up so she sort of just clung on to me, before turning round and saying, in a rather loud voice:

"DON'T TRY AND FEEL ME UP!"

I said "I didn't! You grabbed ME!!!!" In an equally loud tone. She hung on to me to stay upright and used her scarf, hooked round my head, for balance but that plan only lasted until the taxi arrived. She sort of said "*hic* nice to meet you, kissed me, and let go... Which is where I expected her to fall over but, fair play, she managed to stay standing with only a minor wobble! Me and Donna got in for about 2:45am and I immediately went to bed.

... Sorry. I should explain that properly, just to avoid any rumours. Donna got dropped off at her house, and then I got dropped off at my house for 2:45am, where I went to bed!

Anyway, Sunday I got up, had tea, went to the Legion where time seemed to come to a stand still and then what felt like 3 decades later i came home before going to my nans for tea as usual...

Right. I'll leave it there.

TTFN

My Squiggly Black hangover

Hello readers and welcome to my birthday blog. Indeed my birthday was on Saturday, and so begins a new era.

I might just do a quick run down of the weeks events so that I can get to the party...

Monday: Work went quickly and in the evening Adam and John came over to my house for the evening.

Tuesday: Work was great, and the evening was better! Me, Jason and Gemma went to see Korn in Wolverhampton! We arrived early and had a bite to eat in subway and a drink in the Little Civic before going in to the big Civic to watch the warm-up acts before Korn came on! The gig was awsome and part-way through Jo and her sister, michelle turned up. I knew they were going to be there, but they were delayed due to train errors. I have some rather good photo's of Johnathan Davis... Bless his cotton socks... Here we go with the photos...

One of the whole stage. Jonathan is the little black triangle with legs. It's the kilt, you see...

A close up of JD and the infamous microphone that appeared in most of the later videos.

And ol' JD playing the bagpipes! I was hoping he would play them, and I nearly missed it because I was in the loo when he started!

After a good two hour set they encored with....

...NO! not freak on a leash, they played that half way through! They encored with one of the newer ones and afterwards we left and Gemma bought me a Korn Tshirt as an early birthday present (bless her cotton socks!)

We decided to catch a tram back to Brum and we had 10 minutes wait before the last one of the night left...

...Or so we thought! You see the info' displayed on the electronic board was the old timetable, which finished the day before. The new timetable was very different and we had in fact missed the final tram to birmingham. The one tram that did arrive was only going back to the depot as Wenesbury! The driver told us about the old/new timetable changeover so we shouted at him for being employed by wankers....

Anyway, we eventually got a taxi from Wolverhampton to Wythall. It was going to cost £60 but Jason, looking mean and gothy, managed to "haggle" (and by "haggle" I mean "threaten") a taxi driver to do it for £35. So we got in at roughly 2:00am and I went to bed.

Wednesday: Work was rather good and in the evening I went down to Fathers to watch Torchwood and Ice Road Truckers.

Thursday: Work went well and in the evening I went down to the Packhorse. Lank arrived late due to being at a works shindig but it was a good night.

Friday: Work went quickly and in the evening I went with some of the TA's to a quiz on at the Coppice primary school. We took our own drinks and had a really good time. We wee leading at one stage but dropped to 7th place by the end because of a disasterous music round where 30 points were available (10 questions: one point each for artist, title, and year!) we left in good spirits though and I came home to play about on t'internet before going to bed.

Ok, Saturday... My Birthday. I was up early because we were having new carpet fitted. I moved the furniture outside and covered it with large plastic sheets. The guy turned up at 11:00am and got started. After he had laid the new stuff (mmm.... soft) I started getting furniture back in, the TV back in, and the PC back together. This took me until about 2:00pm. I then decided to go to Kings heath with Selena as I could upgrade my phone! I love my K800 but the K850 was beckoning to me... I went in to 02 and started chatting with the sales girl (mainly because they pounce on you like vultures) but she was very nice and allowed me to have a free k850, a half price 4Gb memory card, and a free bolt-on, so now I have free 02 to 02 calls... Thats just about all of my family and a couple of my friends! suits me! I came home to discover that the phone is very cool, but is sold under some rather dubious advertising... Allow me to explain. Please consider the following image:

Now you would think, wouldn't you, that the sides of the phone light up? I would think that because it has been highlited in this photo to be the same colour as the navigation key light...


WELL IT DOESN'T! it's just a bit of plastic that adds a dab of colour to the handset but does, in no way, light up. Now this wouldn't be a major selling point for me and it's not like I'm going to hate the phone just because the sides aren't illuminated. What does annoy me is the rather lax attitude to advertising on Sony Ericssons behalf. There is, however, a feature available on the '800 that they have removed from the '850 that I think was a good idea... They have removed the file manager.

Now I used to love that system because you could add folders to your memory and organise photos and music as you wanted them. This has now been scrapped and music is only available through the media player which is sometimes a pain because other than going in to the main "tracks" tab you cant search for a track on the keypad, you have to manually scroll through them... I have over 300 tracks of music on my phone! Do you realise how long it takes me to scroll through them? I have countered the problem by making playlists but it isn't the same as the good old file manager. I would prefer it if I could somehow load K800 software onto the K850 and keep the look of the media player but have it operate in the same way as the K800, and bring back the file manager... Sony Ericsson, you have been told!

Anyway, other than that it works great and the 5Mp camera is excellent.


After all that me, mum, selena, and Kieron went to the Packhorse for a bite to eat. We only stayed an hour as I needed to get back to be changed for when Lank, Jason, and Gemma arrived to jump in the taxi I had ordered. It came and we left at about 8:00pm. We got in to Solihull and dived in to Wetherspoons. People started to arrive and by 9:30pm I had a full contingent of followers. Dad turned up for a quick bevvy' before going home and we went in to Reflex. A call-out for my birthday was made by the DJ (who kept making references to me throughout the evening)

I took some photo's but Marcus has a lot more. Mine are as follows.



Lank, trying to clean Jennys' ears with his tongue, as Jenny strangles him and Jo. (I like Jo, she should come out more often.)

marcus having a good time but Bobby looks like he isn't fully warmed up yet...

Ah! there we are! Throw Adam in to the mix and things get frisky! Bobby loks happy now!

lank, trying to stretch Gemmas arms out (and succeeding, by the looks of it!)

hee-hee! Well after a time people started making a move and at 2:20am the last of us rolled out (except for Adam who stayed because he found his friend Becky, but thats another story.)

Me and lank caught a taxi from the highstreet and we were home for 3:00am. I went to bed because I needed to be awake fairly early...Sunday morning and I had to shrug off my squiggly black hangover. I was going clay shooting with father. We used to go quite regularly but haven't been in over 12 months. We headed off to Long marston at about 10:00am. We got there for 10:40am-ish and were shooting for 11:00am. We had 50 clays each. I could talk about cross-pairs, rising birds, low skeet and pairs on report, but I wont because it's not very interesting, and just refers to different clays. I hit roughly 30-or-so with about 5 more "wounds" (clays that break, but doesn't get hit with a direct shot)

After an hour or so we left. I came home and lounged in front of the PC for a few hours before being picked up by Donna who was coming with me to my dads house for tea, along with my nan, aunt and selena. He cooked spag-bol and put a few songs on the jukebox (I swear, he is trying to marry me off to Donna) which was nice and we all had a round of laughs before coming home for about 10:20pm.

Right. Thats about it readers. I have to cut it short there as Dan has come round and we are going for a curry at Millenium at the Maypole.

TTFN readers.

There's no sense crying over every mistake. You just keep on trying 'til you run out of cake...

hello readers! Welcome once again to a spankingly good update from yours truly...

Lets crack on with Monday.

I went to work in the regular fashion and spent the day running around... Which was good because time seemed to fly by and I was out of the door before I knew it. In the evening I went with John over to Adam and Marcus' house where we watched some TV and played a bit of Xbox.

Tuesday, and work was the same. I got out for about 4:45pm and came home to watch some TV before going back out to Adams with John who had brought his Ricky Gervais DVD with him. The newest DVD: FAME is hilarious and I now want to watch "Politics" and "Animals" because I have never seen them. We called it a night at about 11:30pm and so we left.

Wednesday at work was a good day but I didn't leave until nearly 5:00pm due to a bit of training (every Wednesday we get talked to about how to do our jobs better!)

In the evening I went down to Fathers as usual. he had the football on so I witnessed "that" goal made by the GoalKeeper.

Thursday at work, time seemed to slow down from it's 3 day rush. I got out at 4:30 though and came home to play my Xbox for a bit. Lank picked me up at 8:00pm to take a trip down to the Packhorse as usual. It was a good evening filled with merryment, laughter, and song...

... Well, OK, not that much song.

We unofficially set up my Birthday arrangements (Which is on Saturday!) with the plan being to hit Solihull in the evening and have a bit of a crawl around the bars (In fact everyone is welcome to come along if they want to! Saturday 8th March, Solihull, 8:00pm-ish, meet in Weatherspoons!)

Friday. Last day of the week...

... It dragged.

I left at what felt like silly-o-clock, even though it was actually 3:30pm. I came home to relax and then went, with John, over to Marcus in Solihull. Now Mr Turbitt was not there, as he was going to London early the next morning and was his parents house for the night.

John had bought "The Orange Box" with him for the Xbox. Now for those of you who don't know, The Orange Box is the collective name for 5 games that come in one package, namely Half Life, Half Life 2.1, Half Life 2.2, Team Fortress 2, and Portal. Now of these games there wa sonly one that captured my imagination to the point where I would buy the 5 games just to play the one: Portal. It's difficult, frustrating, time consuming, but most of all, it's BRILLIANT! No enemies, no complicated back-story, no frantic button pushing, just pure awsomness. Allow me to explain:

You play a person contained within a building made up of various rooms with each room connected by a lift. You are being tested on your logic-solving ability and must work out how to open the door, or sometimes simply traverse, each level. To help you do this you are equiped with a clever bit of kit. Namely a Portal gun. You can fire at a point on the wall to open an entrance portal, and fire again at a different spot to open an exit portal. Now this sounds like there is no challenge, since you can effectively go anywhere, but believe me it is! To give you an idea of how compicated it gets, let me tell you that the game is made up of only 19 rooms (plus a few after you complete the testing stages and find yourself roaming the "secret" rooms, and then a boss) and the only reward you are promised on completion of the game is some cake!

Anyway...

We got so far but time was against us so we left at a reasonable 12:30am.

Saturday. I got up early as me, mum, Selena, nan, and Grandad were going in to Birmingham so we could get mum a mothers day present, and mum could get nan a mothers day present. I picked Selena up and she handed me some CD's with the first 80 episodes of Dragonball Z on that Kieron had ripped for me. I then set off to Northfield to get my nan and Grandad, before setting off for Birmingham. We spent a good few hours wandering around various shops. Whilst in HMV I bought Run Fatboy Run on DVD. For those of you who haven't seen it, SEE IT! It is extremelly funny without being overly complicated. Anyone who finds Simon Pegg funny should definitley watch it.

In the evening I went with John back over to Solihull (seriously, it's like my second home!) to play some more Portal. Before this though we ordered in a chinese. I had cantonese style chicken and enjoyed every bit of it! Afterwards we watched a bit of TV and at 10:30pm Adam came back from his trip to London. We started playing Portal and got to the 14th room with little problem. It then turned up the complexity and we were soon arguing over the best way to complete each level. It was at this point that we all wanted to know (with the exception of John, since he had already completed it) what the end of the game was like. Level 16 came and went with about 20 minutes of thinking and 10 minutes of playing... 17 was tough, but we cracked it. 18... Very tricky. 19 was near impossible but I got through it after a few tries. We then had to run the "secret area" (i.e. the area of the building where your character "isn't supposed to go")

This took ages, and we were all very tired, but wanted to try to beat the game, so we pressed on. We eventually did it, but John had to beat the end boss because it requires accuracy and timing... The two things I haven't got a lot of!

To cut a long story short, we ended up leaving at about 2:30am!

I awoke on Sunday at about 11:00am. Nan and Grandad came up to the house, watched us eat dinner, and then it was time to do my usual stint at the legion. I went in for 2:30pm as usual to find the club quite devoid of any custom. There were about 5 people in the club. Rather fortunately it started to pick up until we were nicely busy! I left at 7:00pm and watched a couple of DBZ episodes before going to my nans for tea as usual.

Ok. Thats where I will leave you. I have to tidy the living room as Adam and John are coming to my house for a change, and the living room currently resembles a film set from Independance Day.


TTFN readers.


... And the science gets done, and you make a neat gun for the people who are still alive!