So… To round up the last week won’t take long at all… Came back on Friday morning, done nothing, same Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and most of Thursday.
“Most of Thursday???” you ask…
Well today I was finally able to hook up a internet connection, it’s dial up but better than nothing really… But now I really hate it, it’s so slow… To download the new iTunes update took a 90 minute dedication, sure I could have waited till I got back to Atlanta and superfast wireless internet, but I’m a curious creature at heart. And trying to do some work is a nightmare, super slow motion, bullet time almost! Oh well… 21 days, 3 hours and 50 minutes…
On the plus side, I’m off to see the Barenaked Ladies at the Glasgow Academy on Saturday night, so expect pictures on Sunday.
I’m not really dead, it just seems like it sometimes… I’m back in Scotland for the next few weeks before I head back to Atlanta, and it’s really, really boring over here, especially without internet access to speak of. But I hope to rectify this situation soon enough…
But in the meantime…
Welcome back to this god forsaken country… I don’t even want to be here!
So here I am in Chicago en route to Glasgow via London Heathrow, and a 3 hour wait is ahead of me… I’m a bit sad to be leaving Atlanta, albeit temporarily, as I was getting too used to life there, you know it’s bad when you can direct non-english speaking taxi drivers to your home… on the phone!
It’s going to be very weird being back in the UK, my friend Scott keeps asking if there is anything I miss, and to be honest I don’t… Everything I could possibly want is here.
Last night was a mixed night, Erika, Phil and me went out for a going away dinner then we went to see our “dream house”, and what a dream, that’s only $450,000… The master bedroom (including the sitting area it has) is the same size as our lounge, kitchen, library and bathrooms, thats not including the en suite bathroom and walk-in closet… Hell, the walk-in closet is the size of my bedroom… “My” bedroom is about the size of our lounge, plus it has it’s own en suite bathroom, sweet!
Phil says if he could he would, and forego the house by the lake for a year or two. I wish I had my camera with me, as the place was freaking huge… and I mean HUGE! Overall it was 6 bedrooms, 6 bathrooms, a huge kitchen, a spacious basement for our office and plenty of little nooks, including a really odd one up stairs.
Sigh!
So yeah, once again I find myself in Chicago’s O’Hare airport, I come through here on my way back in 4 weeks (bypassing Heathrow thankfully) and face a meaty 5 hour wait, I’m thinking I’ll do a quick tour of the city in that time, as that is too much time to kill in one airport.
“I’d sell my soul for a donut!”
Now it seems most people would sell their passwords for some chocolate…
Mmmmmm… Chocolate.
Hard to believe it’s nearly been 3 months, but the time for me to go back to Scotland is finally upon me…
So by way of a retrospective, here’s a few of my greatest hits in my time in Atlanta.
My first post a few days after I arrived.
A day out in Chattanooga, TN..
Not terribly exciting but a lot of fun, only 4 weeks til I come back.
Since last Thursday it’s been a little bit hectic as my friend Scott is visiting from Scotland and we had a full extended weekend planned…
It started Thursday afternoon with us (Robyn and I) picking him up from Hartsfield Airport and driving out to Athens which is the home of The University of Georgia and, I was told, a great nightlife… So we had a few drinks, got something to eat and shot some pool till Scott could stands no more.
Friday was walking around downtown Athens then back to Atlanta to see Cirque du Soleil which was quite a sight… Plus we had scored front row seats in the corner of the stage, so at times we were a little too close for comfort. I would have loved to take more pictures than the 3 I did, but security was pretty tight about cameras and the last thing I wanted was to have it confiscated (see my thought on this from 2 years ago and the infamous Dublin Foo Fighters incident).
Saturday was spent doing the CNN Studio Tour at the CNN Center then a trip up to Six Flags Over Georgia, home of the ride that makes my ass pucker up… Batman The Ride… Never again I tells you…
Sunday was a nice relaxing day down at Turner Field to see the Braves beat the Marlins 3-2 in 10 innings and a game that saw 2 homers, 2 ejections, Chipper Jones carried off injured and an exciting finish with Andruw Jones running from 1st to home after a Marlin outfielder lost the ball in the sun to win the game.
And now it’s back to work until Thursday when I head back to Scotland for a month, it’s going to be very weird being back there, I’m too used to living here now. Who in their right mind would swap 81° sun for 51° (if I’m lucky) wind and rain?
Anyways, here’s a few pictures from the weekend…
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Unfortunately I need to get pictures of Athens off Robyn, and I won’t see her till just before I leave…
Oh, and here’s what you’ve been waiting for… A CNN Center panorama, The Great American Scream Machine at Six Flags, Turner Field and Turner Field from a different view.
Via Business 2.0
Is Amazon taking on Google? Last fall the giant online retailer announced that it was launching a company focused exclusively on search. Lest anyone miss the implications, Amazon promptly rented an office far from its Seattle headquarters — in the epicenter of Silicon Valley, near Stanford University. That’s where both Google and Yahoo were born.
And with that A9 was launched on an unsuspecting public…
I guess the real question is “do we really need another search engine???”. Even their 7 reasons to use A9 sounds eerily familiar…
A9 Toolbar
Web Search: Search the web and Amazon.com’s Search Inside the Book results. You can also do searches on Amazon.com, the Internet Movie Database, Google, and look up words in a dictionary and thesaurus.
Search Highlighter: The toolbar will automatically highlight your search terms in a light yellow. By using the highlighter menu, you can see how many times your search terms appear on the page, and jump to each occurrence of a specific word. Hint: You don’t have to do a search to use the highlighter. Just type one or more words in the search box and click the highlight button.
Your History: Keep track of your last sites visited (on any computer) and your most recent searches. It will keep track of the Web pages you recently visited–even if you switch computers.
Diary: This is the newest and (we think) coolest feature of the toolbar. You can take notes on any web page, and reference them whenever you visit that page, on any computer that you use. Your entries are automatically saved whenever you stop typing or when you go to another page.
Site Info: See information about the website you are visiting, including related links, site statistics (including traffic rank), sites linking to this site, and user ranking. Select from the menu to go to the site’s page on Amazon.com where you can get more information and write a review about the site.
Pop-up Blocker: Stop those annoying pop-up ads.
Though, the diary feature of the A9 toolbar sounds a cool idea.
Things are pretty hectic here nowadays, so for the time being I’ll keep you amused with some trashy pulp fiction for years ago…
It’s as yet untitled and comes from a whole host of better writers than me, back when cotworld had a writer’s jam in 2000…
Untitled #1
I had just gotten out of the county lockup last July after serving forty-seven days for petty larceny.
They picked me up for grabbing a big jar of money marked HELP JERRY’S KIDS from the Stop-N-Shop over on Westover Street and running like a madman. I would’ve gotten away for sure if it hadn’t been for an overzealous store clerk and the fact that I ran right past Tully Kruller’s restaurant which was just lousy with goddamn sheriff’s deputies.
I did my time like a man. You’d be surprised how fast forty-seven days goes by when you’ve got cable. Nickelodeon ran a Hogan’s Heroes marathon that was fucking A, and I used to pretend I was Colonel Hogan and I kept calling all the other fellows by different names. You know, Carter, LeBeau, Kinch and a skinny Irish guy who stole a car was Newkirk. He was the closest we had to an Englishman. All the boys seemed to enjoy it and hated to see me go, but time waits for no man.
Anyway, I was newly sprung and in dire need of beer money. I’d learned my lesson about petty larceny, but getting a job was out of the question. Who the hell would hire an ex-con who didn’t want to work?
That’s when an excellent idea dropped in on me. I scooped up a handful of change from the fountain in Hopeland Gardens and double-timed it over to the payphone at Tully’s. The fleet-footed deputy who had apprehended me gave me a quick wave and a shit-eating smile from his usual booth as I punched out Vernon Smiley’s number on the phone. I felt like giving him the finger, but only waved back instead. This was no time to stir anything up.
Vernon answered on the fifth ring…
I forgot to mention… Congratulations to Phil Mickelson for winning his first Major at Augusta yesterday…
After 47 attempts, it’s about time Mickelson won a big one.
“I kept saying to myself that this was my day,” said the American left-hander, who sank an 18-foot birdie putt at the 18th to see off Ernie Els.
“I just kept believing that something good was going to happen”.
“With it having been such a tough journey it feels even better,” said Mickelson at the end of his 47th major.
This just leaves Colin Montgomerie as the sole contender for the title of “best player not to win a major”.
Did you hear the one about the guy who sold all his belongings (including clothes) so he could stand at a roulette table in Las Vegas and bet it all on the spin of the wheel? Oddly enough, thats what Ashley Revell did over the weekend… And walked away with a cool $270,600. Not to mention a few frayed nerves I’m sure.
A British man who sold all his possessions, including his clothes, stood in a rented tuxedo on Sunday surrounded by family and friends and bet everything on a single spin of the roulette wheel.
[...]
The wheel was spun, a crowd of supporters including his Mum and Dad from London went wild, the ball bobbled over the slots and landed on Red ‘7′ — and Revell walked away with $270,600.
“It all happened so quickly, it was spinning before I knew it,” Revell said, adding he did not intend to try to double it again. He gave a $600 tip to the croupier and plans to party — and buy some clothes.
Well, if I could, I’d do the same thing, except make sure I keep a few grand aside incase lady luck shits on me…
On Saturday we took a little trip up to Lake Lanier to have a barbeque picnic as it was Adam’s last day… And although it was overcast, it was still pretty hot and really gorgeous when the sun eventually did come out.
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Unfortunately there are no pictures of the actual barbeque, as Erika has a phobia of getting her picture taken and she had taken up the chef position, I took her threat of “I know where you sleep” while brandishing a rather large and sharp kinfe rather seriously…
And I’ll end with the obligatory panorama shot, god, I’m so predictable now aren’t I?
Have you seen my wig around?
I feel naked without it…
OK, not quite the classic Jane’s Addiction song, but funny nonetheless…
This comes via Hanni.
Adam leaves tomorrow to return to the UK for 6 or so weeks… I leave in just under 2 weeks now, and it’s going to be kinda weird not having Adam around, quieter if nothing else…
Now, to appreciate that comment you’ve got to know Adam and his wicked way with words, 99% of which is innuendo in one form or another and many a great one liner that there is really no come back from…
For example:
“If I wanted your opinion I’d take my cock out your mouth”
How do you respond to that? I mean really… This is a guy who, if he had the means, would buy a Dodge Viper, drive it round to a friends house, who loves and I mean LOVES Dodge Viper’s, and wreck it in front of their eyes…
Why? For shits and giggles I suppose…
Yes, it’s going to be a lot quieter for sure.
So Condoleezza Rice finally testified… And by all accounts she handled herself well… Not bad considering she’s had, what, a month to prepare?
So what do we take from this momentus occasion?
It’s not the Bush Administrations fault… They only had 238 days from taking office to the attacks of 9/11, that’s not enough time to prepare, so blame Bill Clinton for his “insufficient” policies towards terrorism. Yet, Bush administration decided immediately after entering office to continue pursuing Bill Clinton administration’s covert action and other efforts to fight al-Qaeda.
OK…
Another point she made was President Bush saying he was “tired of swatting at flies” when it came to al-Quaeda…
Senator Bob Kerrey: “Can you tell me one example where the President swatted a fly when it came to al-Qaeda prior to 9/11?.. We only swatted a fly once on the 20th of August 1998. We didn’t swat any flies afterwards. How the hell could he be tired?”
That’s grade-a ownage…
Other than that there wasn’t a whole lot, no apology, no “sorry, we fucked up”, no nothing, just a lot of Ms. Rice saying she was “quite certain” about things… Quite Certain??? It’s times like this you better be 100% sure.
“I’m quite certain the President never pushed anybody to twist the facts”
Yeah, that makes me trust her… I’m very unsure if she’s the sacraficial lamb, or the first domino to fall from this sorry affair. The real question is do you believe her? Frankly I can’t really trust that what they say anymore…
I guess everyone’s out to cover their own asses in the end. We’ll see in July… Pending White House approval, like that’s going to happen.
Meanwhile as this was going on, A suspicious package was found in Atlanta’s Hartsfield Airport and went practically unnoticed in the news.
Every 10 seconds it happens… It never used to, how it started I have no idea, everything I’ve tried to stop it has ended in failure…
What you ask?
God damn Messenger Spam pimping their crap at me!
HELP!