Work looking up.

After being in sales since I left school in 1989, I think I am finally moving away from it. Although the money is good, it's not the most important thing any longer and with Mrs B gradually becomming more and more qualified in her Chartered Institute of Management Accountants, I can take more of an earning back-seat.

My last sales job ended at the start of February when the guy I was helping out decided to close the business leaving me with nothing. That was the final straw and since then I have been looking for something new. It seems to be coming together now.

As of the 5th March I am tutoring in Information Technology for the Peterborough Council for Voluntary Services (a lottery funded business school for voluntary and charity organisations). It's only a couple of hours per week but it pays well and could be a good lead in to more tutoring work.

I'm also now a registered "Internet Assessor" for a large American company, working anything between ten and twenty hours per week rating search engine results. Money isn't great but I can do it at home, at times to suite me.

I've also been offered a job with HMRC (Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs....the TAX MAN!) in the records office here in Peterborough. Not sure yet if I will take that as it's three or four days per week on very poor money. Waiting on news of Mrs B going full time instead.

Overall....things looking up a bit.

Peterborough to Grantham!

Did someone a (paying) favour today and delivered a parcel for them to Grantham. Shame that someone decided to do a crash somewhere between Grantham and Stamford very early so they closed the A1 leading to a 37 mile diversion. Which itself wouldn't have been so bad if it hadn't gone through Oakham and then Melton Mowbray and if they hadn't been slowed right down by roadworks.

All in all, an 80 mile round trip that should have taken two hours at most turned into 120 miles and six hours.

This is what I've been reduced to to try and pay the bills.

So much for that!

Great plans and so on.....the idea really, really was to make sure I updated every single day. In the words of my (soon to be) teenage son: "EPIC FAIL". For some reason, thursday, friday and the weekend just sort of slipped past un-noticed.

Well....I say slipped past - friday/saturday simply knocked me on the head and strolled on past while I was asleep. Something went wrong inside me and everything felt awful so fourteen hours sleep crept up and kidnapped me.

Funny thing, sleep.....fourteen hours on Friday night, pretty normal (for me) five hours on Saturday night, then last night I managed to see 1.30am, 2.30am, 3.30am and 4.30am on the clock before being woken by the alarm at 6.30am. Today is mostly about tiredness and grumpiness.

My Twitter "Family"

First, I must say that the people below were not consulted about this.

No major news today so straight into a top five. This time, my five Twitter "Family" members:

(5) @fudgecrumpet and @Nettofabulous - two grumpy uncles sat in the corner slagging off the world and making me piss my pants with laughter.

(4) @Stickyplasters - she's my big sister who is always on hand to lend a sypathetic ear when I need a moan.

(3) @nik_kee_dee - my slightly deranged younger sister who all my friends want to shag but are secretly a bit scared of. Like Angelina Jolie in a way. Without the lips. Or the tattoos. Or the small brown people cluttering up the house.

(2) @jason_manford - the brilliantly funny big brother who, when in a good mood, will have a bloody good laugh with you. But still frightens your friends a bit.

(1) @LuceKD and @Richard_Gable - I want them to adopt me.

Ouch - that was harder than I thought. I follow SO many fun people on Twitter and love them all.

One day late!

Well it had to happen - what with a full day's work, home to feed boys, take one of them to piano then run around collecting prescription pills for a friend who now lives 100 miles away, I never got round to writing anything here yesterday.

So - very quick top five......chocolate bars!

(5) Twirl - none of my top four are ever available in vending machines. Twirls are.

(4) Caramac - does this actually class as chocolate? It's sort of chocolate-ish.

(3) Crunchie - too noisy in the mouth to eat while watching TV though.

(2) Ripple - problem is they are just too small. Pack of four is good!

(1) Galaxy - not the poncy new ones with things in, just normal old-fashioned Galaxy.

Day Four......almost

Busy day today getting kids ready to go back to school, cleaning house, haircuts, etc, so no real entry today.

Five current favourite songs:

(1) Empire State Of Mind - Alicia Keys

(2) Ventura - Lucinda Williams

(3) I Got A Feeling - Black Eyed Peas

(4) Your Sister Cried - Mary Gaultier

(5) I Cried For You - Katie Melua

Day Three......

And although I am still "on holiday" so nothing has been done on the "big project"*, I have managed to keep the one-blog-per-day promise AND haven't eaten anything particularly bad for me. That's mostly due to the fact that all the Xmas goodies have now gone with just the cheap chocolate coins and the half empty brandy butter in the fridge.

No real significant achievements today, other than braving Asda for the weekly shop (during which I did buy myself the 2010 calendar issue of FHM - well....I dad to as no-one bought it for me for Xmas this year....first time in a long time.) and I feel I have somewhat let myself down by wasting the evening watching The Simpsons Movie and "celebrity" Big Brother. At least I can sleep sound in the knowledge that I won't be missing anything half-way interesting by NOT watching it again for the next 27 days.

So in the event of any big ground-breaking news and as it's now a two-day-old tradition, I shall list another five favourite things. This time I shall go a bit specialist and list the five best bits of software I have found in my couple of week with an Android phone:

(1) BeebPlayer - totally, utterly brilliant. I can now watch live BBC TV anywhere I get WiFi or 3G signal, along with anything on the BBC iPlayer.

(2) Twidroid - of course, I *must* have a Twitter application on any phone nowadays and this seems to be the best right now.

(3) K-9 Mail - much better than the default Email application, though I have a feeling that as I am staying with a Google phone for the next eighteen months, I may soon be officially changing my email address to my Gmail one. That's gonna hurt.

(4) Flight Director - I was so down for days when I gave back my work iPhone and lost Flight Control. Happier now.

(5) Dolphin Web Browser - simply beats ANY mobile web browser I have seen. And yes - that does include the iPhone one!

Oh! I just noticed that I have done this one with FIFTY minutes to spare! Go me!

* the "big project" is what I am now going to call the magazine. I have the draft of the business plan, a draft outline of issue one, an idea of who to hit for advertisers. All I need to really work on to make it viable is a way to VERY QUICKLY create the readership database.

2nd January....day two!

Not a great start to my 'blog every day' plan....five to midnight and only just rembered!

Following on from the 'five favourite' things started yesterday, I figured today I'd run down my five favourite soft drinks:

(5) Cherry Coke
(4) Cherry Tango
(3) Ice Cold Milk
(2) Dr Pepper
(1) Monster Ripper

That's all. It's late, I'm watching Se7en and the battery on this phone is very nearly dead.

1st January 2010

(Okay....so it's officially the 2nd by the time I actually sat and wrote this, but as I'm still up, it's still the 1st to me.)

This blog has become neglected in the last few weeks...mostly because it's been a struggle just to get through 2009 without having to try and update this thing all the time. BUT there are three things planned for 2010:

(a) Lose two stone in weight

(b) Get the magazine up and running

(c) Update this thing every day

Having done nothing on (a) or (b) today, I felt I at least need to do (c). So......here's my five favourite things on my desk right now:

(1) My phone - it's a T-Mobile G2 (also known as an HTC Hero) and it runs the Android operating system. Had it now for a couple of weeks and it's been a bit touch and go, but am getting used to it now and loving it more and more each hour. Bloody useful and so, so much nicer that those iPhone things.

(2) Yoko. She's not actually ON the desk, but on the shelf above it. She's a tiny little Chinese Dwarf Hamster who sleeps 23 out of 24 hours but is very cute around about midnight.

(3) My BluTac - there just always seems to be a lump of it around and I just have to fiddle while watching iPlayer or whatever crap I have downloaded (currently 24 series four).

(4) My USB stick....Sandisk 8GB Titanium....sleek and sexy and always with me.

(5) A bowl of Crunchy Nut Cornflakes - no explanation needed :-)

Cheap Xmas!

It dawned on us that we can't afford to do Xmas this year. Well, we can but not in the true spirit of the season: over expensive, credit reliant shopping binges that we're told we ought to do by the media. So we've settled on something much smaller, limiting ourselves to just £200 for the whole shebang. And that really is everything - each other, three boys, family dinner, etc. Going to be a struggle but then why not? The rest of the year has been and we wouldn't want to go soft now!

Took a walk in to town at lunch time and bought some Fimo. Having spent a nice couple of hours the other day fiddling with Plasticine with Tommy, I thought back to the little Xmas decorations Mrs Brykins and I used to make in our teens. That led me on to thinking what a nice and thoughtful way of spending very little money on people this year.....so if you know me and deserve a gift this year, expect tree decorations, keyrings and other useless junk!

Tomorrow is another day.....

I'm going to start putting the title to these posts AFTER writing them. Mostly because I am starting to write this one with no idea where it's going.

Felt bad all day today - up early to sort out lunches for the boys then fell back into bed at 7:30....only to be woken by Mrs Brykins stomping around at quarter to nine trying to get the boys out the door to school. Bless her - she'd seen me zonked back out so managed to get herself up and ready for work and organise the boys and take them to school.

She could have been a bit bloody quieter though.

Then somehow managed to go back to sleep until almost mid-day, waking with a horrible headache which has been around all day.

So headache = no real brain power, so nothing very much got done.

Tomorrow I WILL get re-started on the business plan. I promise myself.

Ah - there's the title!

Very Little To Report

It's been a while since I updated here, but there are the odd few people (or few odd people) that do look in, so a guilt-update is called for.

Problem is, very little to report! Days currently consist of getting the boys up, making breakfasts and packed lunches, walk to school, home to do cleaning, washing and cooking, bit of Facebook and an episode of 24 or something, collect kids, feed them, do homework, put them to bed, veg out in front of Twitter.

Things may change a little from next week - start work again! Only three days per week so still plenty of cooking and cleaning time. Depressingly it's another job in sales, and that just gave me a point to this post: Tell your children to find something they enjoy doing before they fall into sales!

With no formal qualifications in anything, I drifted in to sales 20years ago. I've hated a total of nineteen years and eight months of it I think. Who in their right mind would WANT to be the person that interrupts people with phone calls or visits to their office to peddle something that, if they wanted, they would find online or in the Yellow Pages? Who would enjoy being told to get lost, to have the phone hung up on them?

Having needed to earn the money to make sure at least one parent could be home while the kids are growing up, I had to stick at it. Now, nearing 40 and in the middle of the worst recession in my lifetime, it's proving impossible to move out of it - especially as I am now having to earn to fund my wife being able to work part-time to gain her own qualifications.

So please, please make sure your kids have an idea of what they like to do and get some training, experience and qualifications!

(Think I'll avoid updating for a bit longer or these will get depressing.)

I can feel myself getting older....

I have a room full of Boy Scouts playing Monopoly here and am huddled in the corner on the pretext of making sure they understand the rules, but really just to make sure they don't get too sweary. But watching out for sweary boys isn't what's making me feel old.....it's the fact that Monopoly now doesn't seem to come with any money!

Not sure if it's just this particular edition, but there's no cash involved. Instead, each player is issued with a credit card and there is a bleep-making machine that transfers funds from one card to another. I can see that it's a nice gimmick for the kids, but how does it teach them anything about handling money?

One of the boys is mine and I remember him, not so very long ago, arguing for some new football boots. I had told him that we had no money right then and his reply was a casual "well go to the cash point then". I had to explain (and it took a while) that the cash point didn't just print money but only gave me the money that I had in the bank. Nothing in the bank, nothing out of the cash point.

But it did make me realise that kids don't really SEE as much money as I did when I was small. That's not to say I was rich, but I do recall seeing my parents pay for things with cash. I understood that people worked for money, that money went into pockets and then out and into the hands of shop-keepers, garage owners, publicans, etc.

In my old age I am now thinking "kids these days....they don't know the worth of money....they think that there's always going to be money on a credit card or out of a hole in the wall". It makes me sad because it's true but it makes me sadder that I am even thinking it.

Warm and pleasant feeling

Today I was amazed to discover that there is at least one person reading this. Gave me a nice, warm feeling inside. And that's NOT gay, okay?

New job....sort of.

Having been hunting for a new job since mid-July, it seems that the hunt is almost, sort of, over. I've had a couple of meetings with a guy that runs a security company and, all being well, I ought to be starting on the 2nd of November for him.

I'm still working for myself - MUST call the tax man and tell him I am self-employed again - doing sales and marketing for him over the East Anglia region. They provide security patrols, on-site guards, etc, for factories, warehouses, offices and so on.

Good thing is that it's only three days per week - and they are as flexible as I want, so I can still do school stuff, have two late mornings, mess about on Twitter and Facebook and all the things I have got used to over the past few months. It'll also mean I will have the time to do the college courses I am thinking about - so I can (eventually) teach IT in evening classes or to corporate clients.

Start of a new chapter? We'll see - I know all about eggs and pregnant chickens.

Couple more old photos

Just so I can go to bed later tonight knowing that I had at least made an update today, I'm gonna throw a few scans of some old slides from the early 1990's....

Lazy Weekend

Mrs Brykins and the two eldest boys are in France for the weekend - left Friday afternoon and not back till Tuesday afternoon. That leaves just me and little Tommy at home so we're bumming around and doing nothing at all.....no washing, no ironing, no hoovering. Nothing.

Today we lazed around in bed till eleven, got up and had Chocolate Croisants for breakfast, then ham rolls for lunch. We walked down to the chippy for cod and chips for dinner then ate Rolo deserts while watching Merlin on TV.

Got Tommy tucked up in bed and watched back-to-back American Office (which is, I have to say, so much better than the UK version) and now am catching up on Facebook and Twitter.

Found this photo in my archives - memory jogged by someone on Twitter who took a squirrel picture.

It was taken in the grounds of Christchurch Abbey back around 1992 or so and I do recall sending it to KP Foods at the time. They wrote back saying that it was a shame but they were just about to re-brand their nuts.

Bad timing. Again.

Do I do enough to have a blog?

Just noticed that I've not put anything on here recently and sat down to write something. And realsed that right now, life is so crap that there's really nothing for me to say.

Take today - got a lie in as Mrs Brykins took boys to school. Then she went to work, so I lay in bed and finished a book that I have already read twice. Got up, saw that Bioshock had finished downloading so installed and tested that....seems to work okay.

Went through my email and applied for another couple of jobs - trying to do at least four a day now, though only getting any kind of confirmation to one or two. Still - that's a numbers game.

Listened to some of Radio 2 while eating lunch (cold Raviolli from the tin) then cleaned the kitchen, tidied the lounge and dining room and put all the garden furniture away.

Ate a Turkish Delight bar.

Now am sat here, bored, waiting for the rest of the household to come home. Really worth writing about, eh?

Facebook Fan Check Virus?

I'm writing this in the hope that the search engines might pick it up. Just today there has been a rash of Facebook status updates saying: "All those using the FAN CHECK APPLICATION please DELETE it and its PICTURES as it contains a virus and takes 24-48 hours to infect everyone on ur friends list! Please copy 2 ur status 2 let everyone know thanx". After looking into it a little is seems that this is a two-pronged hoax attack.

On the one hand there is the normal hoax/timewaster of getting people to blindly re-post every single mention of a new virus. Quite why people (a) blindly re-post these or (b) start them in the first place is beyond me.

However - there seems to be a second element to this particular hoax - if you Google "Facebook Fan Check Virus" then almost all the results will be sending you to what APPEARS to be anti-virus software or online virus checking web sites. These sites themselves have carry a MUCH higher risk than anything Facebook may currently accidently allow. These sites will warn you that your computer has a virus or trojan and ask you to download a cure. DO NOT DO THIS as you WILL become infected with a trojan.

Stick to anti-virus sites and software you know and trust. NOT those thrown up by random Google searching.

There's a little more info here: http://mashable.com/2009/09/07/facebook-fan-check-virus-hoax/

Current Favourites:

Film: Cashback
Song: 'Soon We'll Be Found' by Sia
Singer: Lucinda Williams
Artist: Marc Quin
Car: Nissan Skyline GT-R34
Food: Kentucky Fried Chicken
Watchmaker: Raymond Weil
Character from The Nine: Katheryn Hale (yum yum)
Sandwich: Roast turkey and pickle
Flower: Tulip
Hair: Red
Pen: Mitsubishi Uni-Pen Fine Line
Book: The Fermata
Radio Station: Radio 2
Website: Facebook
Number: 5
Day of the Week: Sunday
Film Maker: Tim Burton
Drink: Monster Ripper
Toilet Roll: Andrex
Actress: Zooey Deschanel
Chocolate Bar: Galaxy Ripple
Country: UK
Boat: The Savarona
Time of Day: 1am
Shopping Centre: Bluewater
Kids TV Presenter: Anne Foy
Public Holiday: Xmas Day
Social Network: Twitter
4x4: Nissan Pathfinder
Flag: China
Napkin Fold: Fan
Chicken Meat: Breast
Wood: Maple
Instant Messenger: MSN
Bubble Bath: Tesco Kids Rasberry Crush
Takeway: Chinese
Car Colour: Black