*insert witty tagline here*
Merry Christmas!
I won’t have time to do any more updates between now and the New Year, so I just wanted to say that, wherever you are and whatever you’re doing, I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Ho Ho Ho! Tiz the season to be jolly!
I hope everyone’s feeling the Christmas spirit (or at least drinking some 
)!
Hanne went off back to Norway this evening where she’ll be for a week with her family before returning to ring in the New Year with me. As for me, i’m off to spend Christmas with my grandmother, uncles, parents, and brother up in Wales! This will be the first time in 3 years that I haven’t spent Christmas with Hanne, which is a bit of a downer, but as we’ll be apart for barely a week i’m sure we’ll get by.
So the main point of this post is just to vent my frustration at my own ineptitude. Last Saturday I put down my mobile phone SOMEWHERE in this house. It then decided to run out of batteries before I had a chance to call it and find out where it was hiding, and now it’s lost somewhere! I swear the thing has legs. But perhaps this is a blessing in disguise… I’ve had the Sony Ericsson K700 for over a year, which, at the rate some people go through phones, is an eon and a half.
I’ve been thinking of switching back to Nokia, as with my last phone and it’s predecessor (the T610) the little thumbstick seemed to become quite unresponsive after a couple of months. Over the last few weeks I’ve had to give up completely on trying to move it into the “up” position, instead having to scroll downwards through the entire list of menu options, only to just miss the option I was aiming for and having to go through the whole rigormoral again. A couple of months ago Nikolai acquired the Nokia 6680. Although it’s a little chunky it is a nifty piece of kit! More recently, Nokia has come out with the N70, which seems to have all the same great features of the 6680 but packed into a slightly slimmer, sexier shell.
I called up Orange to sort out the upgrade. Having been a loyal, satisfied customer for about 15 months I figured they’d have no problem in giving me the phone (assuming I signed up to a new contract or something, which I would have no problem doing)… but noooooooooo. If I just want to upgrade, the new phone would cost me around £240!! WTF! So for new customers they’re willing to give the phone away, but for me I have to fork over the same amount as if I wanted a new video iPod?!? Pah. So in order to save the money it looks like I’ll have to cancel my contact and then sign up. Unfortunately this means i’ll have to get a new phone number and seeing as I can’t find my old phone I have no way of notifying everyone of the change. Arse!
Incidentally, a few weeks ago I received a call from someone claiming to be calling me on behalf of Orange, asking if I’d be interested in upgrading my phone. The number looked like a regular mobile number to me so I was having doubts about the authenticity of the caller, and promptly hung up. Then I remembered something Simon Willison had written a few weeks prior, having had a similar experience himself. I hadn’t even proceeded with the call far enough to get to the “security check” phase he mentions, but I definitely wasn’t going to give out security details to any cold caller.
Anyway, hopefully I’ll get this new mobile business sorted before Christmas. I’ll probably stumble across my old one within a day or two anyway…
EDIT +1 day: Yep, like I said, I found the old one! It even seems to be working a little better now that it’s had a few days of “vacation”.
Remember when I hurt my right ankle a couple of months ago? Well the other week I went and did exactly the same thing, except to the OTHER ankle. DOH! At first I didn’t think it was as bad, but it’s now almost 2 weeks gone and the swelling still hasn’t gone down much, and it still hurts to put much pressure on. Maybe i’ll go see a doctor at the weekend. Hopefully it’ll be better within a few weeks, in time for skiing with my family in January! woo!
In other painful news, Manchester United were knocked out of the Champions League by Benefica tonight. This season is just going from bad to worse! The performance was abysmal! With the recent departure of Roy Keane United are seriously missing a strong midfield presence. I hated Alan Smith when he played at Leeds, and I hate him even more playing for United! His good games are the exception rather than the norm. And don’t even get me started on Rio Ferdinand. He’s been going downhill all year and his lacklustre performance tonight will only serve to fuel the arguments that he’s an overpaid nonce. Sheesh.
So on to some music news to try and calm me down: last Saturday Hanne and I went to see the most famous thing to ever come out of Norway: A-Ha, live at the NEC Arena! Unfortunately the NEC is little more than a large warehouse with a less-than-brilliant sound system and some cheap podium thingies set up around the perimeter, so I was less than impressed with that aspect of the event. But they put on a good show, playing a couple of their older “classics” as well as some of their newer material (I didn’t even know they were still making music until then) from their upcoming album (another surprise to me): Analogue. Also, there were way more people there than I expected. I was thinking it was just gonna be a bunch of older, mostly Scandanavien, women, but in a shock turnout the majority actually seemed to be (drunk) middle-aged Englishmen! Surprise, surprise.
Following that, on Monday me and a couple of guys from work went to see Faithless over at the NIA… definitely more my style! The crowd was awesome! We had tickets for seats in the stands around the edge, which was a bit of a shame as the standing room only down on the main floor was heaving and would have been brilliant fun, however given the state of my ankle I’m glad I gave it a miss this time. Dave (one of the guys I went with) took a couple of videos on his mobile phone. The video is shocking and the audio isn’t very good either but it’ll give you a small idea of what it was like (Note to parents: don’t even bother wasting the time downloading the clips; you’ll just shake your heads and dismiss it as “awful” 
).
Anyhoo… i’m off to watch TV and get some sleep…
(I can’t get no sleep… *doop doop doo doop doop doo doop doo doop doo doo doo*)