It's grim up t'north.

Grim, grim, grim. Grey and miserable too.

But enough of the weather, my weekend was actually good fun. The friend I was visiting (ooooh, he needs a name. Hmmm. I do believe 'N' isn't taken), N, is a bit stressed so we aimed for maximum chilloutability and minimal doing things.

We did however eat a lot of food and I'm now fat(ter) :(

Lots and lots of food. N and I did a lot of experimental cooking* when he lived in Bristol and he's kept it up on a more regular basis than I. I think being married gives him a reason to cook most nights. It's hard to summon up the enthusiasm to cook for yourself every night. Anyway, we had a top-class fry-up, followed in the evening by homemade chilli-burgers. Yum.

And all washed down with beer. Non-alcoholic Becks in fact (I felt bad about not drinking the 0.5% Clausthaler as well seeing as he'd bought it especially but a rule is a rule). It's the first time I've ever had alcohol-free Becks. It tasted weird, though I'm not sure if that was because I can't really remember what Beer tastes like, or whether it just tastes weird.

We did find time to go and see Doomsday, the new Neil Marshall film. If you liked Dog Soldiers or The Descent then go and see it - it's full of nods to 80's films such as Escape From New York or Mad Max and is enjoyably silly. We then watched Die Hard 4.0** on DVD. I don't believe I've seen a worse film this century. In fact, at any use of technology I nearly vomited my own eyes out (uh, yeah, anyone can reprogram a mobile to become a satellite phone in about 20 seconds. Oh really? I think not). Hollywood and films about computers should never the twain meet. It's not even a geek thing, but having worked in the industry for yonks it grates that in films the following things are all true:

1) The more monitors you have, the better you are at 'hacking.'
2) Any hacker can also type at 450 words per minute. Touch type one handed at that rate too. As opposed to real life where anyone coding actually types really, really slowly.
3) No-one ever does a typo. Ever. In real life proper techies are all dyslexic and have the spelling skills of a blind albanian who doesn't speak English.
4) Every computer room is spotless and tidy. Oh, and each server has it's own monitor and some flashy lights. A real server room will be piled high with useless junk, software CDs and manuals - and will have one monitor with a switch as it's cheaper and no-one wastes money that way.
5) Anything to do with transferring or copying always has an accurate progress meter that does something flash. Or the data is shown to scroll up the screen, all seventeen billion records. Just thinking about this makes my blood boil....

Argh! I'm going to stop now before I get annoyed.

I will say that N is rubbish at GTA4 though :)

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Coming later this week to The Reluctant Contractor - a serious post so boring you will fall asleep before the end. Find out exactly what Red Squirrel thinks of the world's current economic model, the obsession with growth at the expense of stability, the ever-growing gap between the rich and poor, the lack of true social mobility and the evils of compound interest.

Or don't. Y'know. I'm not going to force you to read it.

Also coming this week, Red Squirrel reviews his pre-season football predictions and finds out just how wrong one man can be - this week, only on The Reluctant Contractor. Your one-stop shop for nonsensical ramblings.

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I'm still tired after last night. I'm still tired because I got little sleep. I got little sleep thanks to the wonders of having pets. Or pet, as is currently the case.

I was woken at 2am as Floyd pulled off his patented manoeuvre and belly-flopped onto a mouse. I wish I was joking. He spotted a very small mouse he'd patently brought in earlier without me noticing and released under my bed. As it cautiously nudged to freedom from under the bed, Floyd (who was at the time stretched out next to me on the edge of the bed) simply rolled off and landed on him. And I thought *I* was lazy!

Anyway, I was shattered and while I briefly contemplated getting out of bed to drag him off and watch the mouse flee under my bed again and keep me awake all night I just let him get on with it (I justify it as the mouse by this point would be dead of a heart attack in a couple of hours anyway). I regret this decision. The sound, half an hour later, of Floyd crunching through the skull as he ate the mouse a mere two foot from my head is - I feel - a sound that will stay with me to the grave. So too will the sounds, two hours after that, of Floyd being sick all over my nice Indonesian chair. The view this morning of half-digested bits of mouse (easily identifiable too) looked like something out of Alien.

All together now:- YUCK!!!!!

*As in the experiment was to see what would happen if you gave two men enough beer to stun an elephant and then got them to try and cook something. Our sushi was pretty good actually.
**Seriously, if I met the person who decided 'Ooooh it's Die Hard 4, but it involves a computer so we'll called it Die Hard 4.0' then I will kill them.