and the answer is

Disk five, twenty minutes in.
I could have finished but the observer came into work at that point so I really had to stop.
Think I'll keep the last bit for the flight back up north, or at least the airport. It's going to be Bristol airport, so I'll need something to keep me occupied, that or the bar upstairs.

Which reminds me, had a rather good cup of coffee in Newquay the other day, and I realised that it IS possible to overdose on caffeine. And fun. It may have something to do with asking for a "large with an extra shot" without realising that a large already has three shots of espresso in it.
Buzz buzz buzz.

Marathon - my style

On a night shift, way down south in the hinterland of Cornwall and I'm going to try something.
While I'm working I've got the Lord of the Rings on in the background.
The extended editions.
All of them.

Don't know how far I'll get, but I've got 12 hours or so to try....

I'll let you know how it goes.

5 am, and I've been up for a couple of hours already

One of the least fun bits of shifts is the way it messes up your sleep patterns.
Managed three and a bit hours last night, probably sleep on the plane south - something I didn't say, I'm down south forecasting for a week, the office is paying for the flights and the hire car down there.
This is part of the reason that if I'm off, even if I'm not on a night shift, I'll sleep in when I can. Ahh well, as my dad said while loading me with roofing felt to fit, "if you can't take a joke, you shouldn't have joined." And to be honest I like night shifts, hell, apart from the early starts on days and the disrupted sleep, I like shifts. Besides, it's like we used to say, "Sleep is for the weak, caffeine is for the strong!" or, as I put on a website, "Sleep patterns? Ha, I **** 'em!"
On the plus side, I got Sky a while back (Scotland and channel 5, and digital reception, just doesn't happen) and at the random times I'm watching TV, the knowledge package I got means that the Discovery channels and the like usually have something good on, or there's always the BBC news. Reminds me, Bill Bailey did this bit when I saw him in Cheltenham.

On a lighter few notes, joined Facebook, found a few more old friends blogs, and loads of old friends. Since I've moved up here I've found how important friends are, even if they're not sat infront of me, that they are there somewhere, be it down south, on the other side of the world or on the end of a phone line, makes the world so much a better place. Like Jo Burt said in a Mint Sauce strip (January 2003) -
"I look out into the dark and it just reflects the night inside,
and my friends ride through it with big bright lights."


And if any of my friends fancy a cheap holiday in one of the most beautiful parts of the country, I'm declaring an open house! If I'm in, everyone's welcome! I think I can fit about 7 people sleeping in the living room with inflatable beds for three, a sofa and a Thermarest.

Webcomics and T'Interweb in general.

Please note, this is not about time wasting, it's about what to do when there isn't anything more immediately demanding on your time.
At work, especially on nights or quiet days, we have quite alot of spare time. I had been using this to do more work on my NVQ and the job folders, but those are all done now. So the problem arises, what does one do with the time?
Should I try and carry on writing the story I've been working on for about three years (not sure how far I've got in words or chapters but I'm about 30% through the story), should I take a book in to read (problem, this will increase the number of books I read, which can become costly), should I surf the net for new and unusual things to do or should I take up the OU where I left off and try and improve myself. Or I could do something for the office.
Aside - here's one for you, the office has a whole PR and marketing department (not counting brand managers ;) ), whose job is to market the office to wider world. I mentioned to them that the Wikipedia page about the office is frankly pants and did they think it was worth improving, seeing how invasive the Wiki is these days. Their response was to invite me to write the article for them to have a look at. Now given that I'm almost complaining of having too much spare time on some shifts this may well seem fair but my point is that this is their job, they can get to all of the office, all of the little specialties, whereas I'm a forecaster in the north. In the outfield. One of those not too pleased with some recent events. Meh, aside ends here.
I would do the OU but there are enough other things on the horizon at the moment that would cause problems with that, so it's down to the internet!
I won't say I was there from the start with the net, in fact it was 97 before I saw my first web page, but we did use it alot at uni, so I was amongst the early adopters, but there's SO much of it. I've even edited pages on Wikipedia. I think I may have added some pages but I can't remember.
So to fill my free time, I was directed to the Order of the Stick (OOTS), and from there to the many wonderful worlds of web comics. WooHoo, goodbye spare time!!
Particular favourites are Gone with the Blastwave, Schlock Mercenary, Girl Genius, Flipside and Inverloch, but OOTS remains my favourite. If you've ever played any role play games (not that sort Beth!) you'll love it.
What worries me most about the comics, aside from the fact I get far too many of the jokes (I've only done one RPG that I can remember) is how often the characters remind me of my friends, from Captain Tagon in Schlock (scarily like Andi in looks and occasional directed violence - usually in my direction, but nothing like in intellect or current employment) to most of the cast of Girl Genius, I can relate to most of the players. What worries me is where I'll end up fitting in. Hoping for Kevyn, more likely somewhere between Durkon and Belkar.
One of the things I like about the wonderful worlds that people produce is that, okay, not all of them are brilliant, but someone's made the effort to create a story, and there are many, many of them out there.
Shifts just got shorter. Hurrah!

Internet and Dr Who

Now got internet at home. Broadband no less. Yay!
Been doing some test type things on a site that was sent to me by a friend. No giggling at the back there, she did send me the link first!
Try this one: how ****ed up by Bush are you?
Dr Who's just been on, the episode "Blink" about statues that kill you by sending you back in time. Wow! I think it was better than girl in the fireplace! (for these in the know, that's pretty high praise). Properly scary at times, and ends with you thinking, "okay, I'm not trusting statues ever again!" I won't say too much about it (Kev won't have seen it yet but I think he's going to like it) but there's some wonderful use of quantum interference theory.