Saturday, April 19, 2008

I'm some kind of psychic

I did win two games, as I prophesied (prophesised? prophetted?) yesterday. Lost four, but I think I was playing a lot better than I have been lately, so I choose to see it as being on the road to remembering how to play the stupid game.

Other things worth mentioning - I entertained everyone with my hard-luck stories involving making a ninny of myself on Blue Peter and the like. Some day, I need to acquire some interesting stories about me doing cool and impressive stuff...

Although my former employers didn't appreciate the publicity my blog afforded them, I'm told that Office365.co.uk would really be delighted with anything, good or bad, I might say about them. There's no such thing as bad publicity, so from now on, whenever I want to say anything about my work, I'll pretend I'm working for Office365! This is an arrangement that will work out well for everyone, I'm sure.

The Bath House pub was being run single-handedly by one woman today, and she kept up a cheerful mood throughout. She deserves some kind of prize, except that othello tournaments don't generally have prizes.

David won, and I think Geoff came second, and I didn't come last. I can't remember what happened in any more detail than that. Check out the website when it's updated, if you really want to know.

David also had a fantastic drawn game against someone, I forget who, in which he ended up with no edge discs at all. I've always wanted to see a no-edge win, and this is as close as I've come so far.

Kali is the only person in the history of the Bath House's conference room to know how to work the dumb waiter.

There's a kurnik tournament starting in eight minutes, and I think I'll play in it, even though it's probably a bad idea because my brain's burnt out from all the othelloing today.

Friday, April 18, 2008

London calling

Early start tomorrow to go down to London for the othello. Must remember to bring my clock this time, just in case some disaster means we're short of them again. I'm slightly more confident of winning a game, maybe even two games, this time, I've been playing half-decently on kurnik for the last couple of days.

And once I'm back, really got to get on with the job-hunting! I'll admit I haven't been as pro-active on that front as I really should have been, this past week. I have arranged a guest-speaker gig at a company conference which, in light of recent developments, I'm not going to say another word about, just in case, but that's not a full-time, bill-paying kind of job. And when I say 'arranged' I mean they called me and I said okay, of course. But on Sunday, I'll start pestering all the local companies who are looking for accountants. Won't that be fun?

Thursday, April 17, 2008

Autobots wage their battle to destroy the evil forces of the Decepticons

I discovered something extremely cool tonight while randomly channel-hopping - Transformers is being shown on the obscure cable channel POP! And not the rubbish recent version of the Transformers cartoon either, the original classic "future" series from 1986! I flicked over just in time for the second half of "Call Of The Primitives" tonight (a good one - unusually wonderful artwork more than making up for slightly incoherent story).

This is absolutely brilliant news for the youth of today. Young people who watch this channel, and there must be someone watching it because they read out a letter afterwards from someone who said Transformers was his favourite, will get to see what giant-robot cartoons should be like, rather than the awful CGI drivel we get in the 21st century! And, since the old series was set in the far-flung future world of 2006, they might not even realise it's old, and think it's something new and exciting! A whole new generation of 'real' Transformers fans is born! Yay!

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Othelloing

The London regional is on Saturday, so I'm playing in the late-night tournament on kurnik (which is now called PlayOK, which I think is a much less cool name). And due to ineffective time-management on my part, I'm blogging in between rounds.

Thus far I've lost three and won one, and that one was only because my opponent obligingly threw away a fairly obvious win a couple of moves after I'd thrown the game away with a similar blunder. This doesn't bode well for the weekend, but possibly it will put my brain in othello mode when I go to bed after the tournament, and I'll dream up some new amazing unbeatable winning strategies. That's my master-plan, anyway - leave it to my brilliant subconscious mind, because the conscious part hasn't got a clue.

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Gotta go back, back, back to school again

Wow, lots of people I went to school with are on Facebook, it turns out! It makes me all nostalgic. I was tempted to write a blog reminiscing about my youthful exploits, but I decided that nobody would be interested in it, and besides, these would unavoidably involve talking about various people who might be reading the blog and take offence, and I'm being careful about that at the moment, so I'll give it a miss.

What would be cool, though, is getting the school to invite me back to give an assembly talking about my amazing achievements in the field of memorising useless data slightly more quickly than anyone else - I'll be able to claim that it's a direct result of slacking off and never doing any homework, and undermine everything the teachers are trying to impress on the new generation of QEGSers!

(See, now I've ruined any chance of getting invited there, too. When will I learn to keep my big metaphorical mouth shut?)

Monday, April 14, 2008

How To Be Topp



Hey, look what I found! Someone started up a Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School group on Facebook, and it motivated me to dig up this old class photo from 1992, when I was in the fifth year. That's 15-year-old me at the bottom right, looking down at the floor (and not at the boobies of the girl next to me, despite what everyone says when they see the picture). Yes, I had hair once. No, I never had a good hairstyle, unless you count my brief flirtation with spiky hair in the late eighties. But we do need to resurrect the nickname "Priddy the Hedgehog", don't you think?

Also, could someone please give me some money? Enough to go to Niebüll for the weekend and hang out with memory people at the North German Championship? I've been trying to justify to myself spending the money on the trip, but without a job it's hard to convince myself that it's a good idea. Maybe I'll rob a bank.

Sunday, April 13, 2008

Leisure time

Well, since I haven't got any plans for tomorrow, I'll use the day productively - find a new job, finish all those memorisation papers for Cambridge, write a book-proposal or two, maybe even clean up my flat. That's the plan, anyway, or at least that's the justification for having done nothing productive all day today. I can do it tomorrow, you see!