UK Watercooler 32: Fall Into The Meaning Gap

I was going to say "I can't even remember" the last gig I went to, but I can...

It was at our local mall, outside, end of summer. Various bands, all playing in the big sandpit. Went on till quite late, kids enjoyed it, great time, lots of steps for the whole auidence to sit, roman amphitheatre style.

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y161/MarkGrout/sandpit.jpg

.. and, funnily enough, we had a bucket!

Looks like a Gong gig, circa 1972

Playing in a giant sandpit? What an awesome idea!

The Corsica Studios is just really badly set up. A long, narrow railway arch with a bottleneck right in the middle of it so everyone just gets trapped where they are. Utterly awful when there are too many people in the room.

I think maybe I should stop going to gigs, fullstop. I don't enjoy them unless I have a place to sit down. I was actually in physical agony before Silver Apples even came on, and I'd spent half the night sitting on the floor (hard concrete).

One of the support bands was point blank awful. The other guy was good, if a bit theatrical, but I really wasn't in the mood for him, he went on WAAAAAYYY too long, totally overstayed his welcome. And he was making the walls and floor shake with his sub-bass. There were times I physically felt like throwing up. In that situation, it was vastly unpleasant.

I am so sick of being asked to do impossible things at work. They want to filter on about a million things on one report, instead of having different reports for each thing. AFTER making me do a report which had subreports for each of the things that they are filtering by.

::beats head against desk::

But at least I am busy today, and I have brought music. So far no one has objected.

HA HA HA HA.

The nerve of them!

My former employer just rang me, telling me that I had a rate roll off due (erm, three months ago, actually!) and asking if I wanted to do review my mortgage with them.

I told them "Seeing as how Charcol made me redundant two weeks before Christmas, I am not interested in ever doing business with them again, thank you very much."

Bastards. Trying to make money off me!

Is Gmail down for anyone else?

Don't use Gmail.

I got some spam off Matt DC this morning! Or, rather, the head-hunting company he works for.

My head hurts this morning and I feeling quite tired coz I went to see Jesus and Mary Chain last night at the Roundhouse. Truly, truly great. We were quite near the front too, which is a first for me there...coming up from Oxford means the previous two gigs I've attended at the Roundhouse (Jarvis Cocker and Sonic Youth) I've been near the back - OK a circle can't have a back, but you know what I mean, near the perimeter of the circle & a long way from the stage!

Yesterday morning I went for an interview at a web hosting company in Abingdon. Have you ever been to Abingdon, Kate? I think you'd like it. It is one of the candidates for the oldest town in England. Funnily enough as I was leaving the company's offices, the sun was shining and I was feeling quite chipper about how it went and I was walking along past a babbling brook and thinking "I bet Kate would like this town" and then I looked up and the first building I saw was....the Quaker meeting house!

They have an excellent Morris Team. I think John Spiers learnt his melodeon chops in it.

had some really nice and inexpensive Thai food in the restaurant over the road from the Roundhouse too. and went to the Enterprise afterwards - a pub described by my mate Colin as "both seedy and scene-ey".

Abingdon Priory, amirite?

nothing much left of that now. even the gateway that appears to have survived was actually rebuilt from the rubble of the original, as a cursory examination of its patchwork stonework will reveal....

support last night for the JAMC came from a Dublin band called The Brothers Movement. No world beaters, which prolly means they'll be all over the telly in a coupla months time, and one of the guitarists had either a fake moustache or the fakest looking real moustache I've ever seen.

(he also looked too young to grow one)

Ha ha, The Brothers Movement = Mainline. The mustache is real. That would be Danda, he's s sweetie. Haven't seen them since the namechange/lineup.

Abingdon... I may have been there as a child on a walk with my Godfather. Perhaps we should make a rolling walk there soon! Sounds nice if it is historical.

I've never been to the Roundhouse. I'm glad to hear the Mary Chain are keeping up the good work - saw them last November, and it was brilliant, but didn't really feel the need to see them again.

Have just been to lunch with Emsk and am now full of curry.

bah to you and your fancy civilisation with its lunches.

How about curry in Sarf London next Wednesday? For dinner, obviously, as I shall be here during the day.

Depends on where exactly I am, I might be in Newbury.

Bah! Well, maybe another night, but depends on rehearsal. I just know that Wednesdays will never be a rehearsal night because our drummer goes to Samuri School (don't ask) on Wednesdays.

But anyway, good luck getting the new job, Mark! I think looking up and seeing the Quaker Meeting House was definitely a Sign.

our drummer goes to Samuri School (don't ask)

But I must, I must

good luck getting the new job

cheers. they just seemed so....nice.

going from an office of 250+ to an office of 8 would be weird tho.

It's a class where they teach you how to be a Samuri. Martial Arts, Swordplay and advanced Insulting Your Opponent's Honour. (You think I'm kidding about that last part, eh?)

If the people are nice, small offices are *so* much better.

and advanced Insulting Your Opponent's Honour

Zing Fu?

I think it's just kind of calling people names in Japanese. Japanese in a French accent is actually hilarious.

Oh. I just got that. Groan.

Oh, great. My boss has just fucked off on holiday AGAIN until next Tuesday. Has gone without answer the question I asked him. The developers have fucked the database again and the copy I grabbed before it went down is flawed.

I swear to god, this is the most frustrating assignment I've ever been on. I have no idea what I'm doing here, or how I'm supposed to get on with my job.

It's Friday. Is today going to be as long as every other day this week?

I have a sore throat and cramps.

Bouncy this morning, probably supplied by Dingers and a bacon sandwich.

What is the opposite of bouncey?

Three weeks left on this project, and they've only gone and changed the basic structure of the database. What on earth am I supposed to do?

I need to put on some bouncey music or something. I didn't have time to dry my hair and I feel miserable.

Coldplay?

as in: I feel very coldplay this morning.

sombre? cheerless? subdued? I fear, that there are no antonyms that do it a proper service in time and space. Deflated comes close but doesn't really cut it.

flat.

This is not cheering you up tho, is it?

I'm from Barcelona! That's what you need!

Gah! For a minute I thought you were suggesting that I *listen* to Coldplay, which would probably have me jumping off the roof just to get away from it.

But yes, that is a good adjective for how I feel. Coldplay. Bored and boring and grey and flat and bland and deflated.

Today I am mainly hoping that 1) my boss 2) the developers and 3) Crystal Reports sales team answer my emails so that I have something to get on with.

I have been watching the Nathan Barley DVD I got back from Emsk and I think it is making me hate humanity.

La Dusseldorf was doing it for me this morning. Kerr, you will be pleased that I now have an iPod cable and will be loading your comp this weekend.

I am now being cheered up by thinking about turbo-folk hating pacifist freegan bears.

I want to find out where this is:

http://home2.btconnect.com/smoke/Smoke11-334.jpg

I think this pic is great.

What pray is turbo folk? Does it involve Joseph Porter? If not, why not? (also interested in pacifist freegan bears, that sounds like some kind of kooky ultimate frisbee team)

Oh, I have that one! (Issue of Smoke.) It is indeed a great photo.

I sent an email to the developers, and it went all around the department, and finally came back from my boss - basically saying, sorry, the database is a work in progress, nothing is finalised, even the structure.

How can I build reports when the structure keeps changing?

This is like trying to paint the walls of a house when the foundations aren't even complete. We can talk about what colours they want to walls to be, but it's pointless to start painting until the walls are up and the studwork is on them.

And I'm supposed to be finished painting by the first week of April?

Ain't gonna happen.

And I HATE this job and don't want it to overrun. :-(

Ed -

Bears that are good and bears that are bad

have seen now. I have some turbo-folk, courtesy of ambrose, I will send over, not sure if you will like though. (A lot of it is ska-punk with lyrics like 'we go crazy, mental way' floating up through the unintelligible panoply of slavic shouting, I rather enjoy it, of course)

Please don't YSI, I have no way of picking anything up at the moment.

:-(

I don't like shouting, I was more liking the idea of pretty ladysinging.

That pic: Somewhere on the north circular road, isn't it? Close to hangar Lane, or so...

...and now I have a headache as well as a sore throat. I'm going to be sick this weekend, aren't I?

Eat more curry. Knock that crap out of the park.

Did we not walk past the Smoke place during the Southall Marathon?

I've just sent a long letter to my boss, basically saying "Dude, this is a 6-week contract, someone needs to pull their finger out."

This thing isn't even "going to go to QA" until the end of this month. When my contract ends on the 4th April.

I either need a completed, finalised database. Or else I need to be able to build queries to work around the datasets that keep shifting. I can't have the former, they won't give me permission to do the latter.

I can build a mockup in Access, but Access and Oracle handle certain data types (especialy Memo fields) in slightly different ways - so that any reports built off Access cannot just be hooked back up to Oracle - they will have to be rebuilt.

At this point, I don't even think it's gonna be a question of working 14 hour days in the beginning of April to get it all done (and have no time for testing.) It's just not going to happen within the time frame they've given me. And I don't want that on my head.

Oh, and I got a letter from the NG last night. I didn't get the job.

:-(

http://www.bbc.co.uk/6music/shows/chris_hawkins/tracklisting.shtml

We got a play on BBC6 about 6.45 this morning (above) and a nice plug for tonight's gig. Anyone coming? Col Poo might be IIRC?

I'm not sure I like the sound of turbo-folk.

I am probably going to be there.

Bummer about the NG, however I have a sneakign suspicion that this contract is going to overrun, kate.