Stuff Archives

The season is over and I still can't believe it. Not only did Leicester win the Premier League, but they absolutely dominated it. It's crazy to think that we had a chance of winning, but winning by 10 points is ridiculous. If the odds on us winning the title were 5000/1, can you imagine what the odds would have been on us winning by 10 points.



Nope .... it's not a fantasy. I keep looking and yes, we did indeed win the league!

Well, I'm still in shock at seeing something I never thought I'd see in my life - my beloved Leicester City winning the Premier League. It's crazy to think that any team has been able to take on the might of the big clubs, but the fact that it's Leicester makes it all the more special.



So much has already been written or said about this feat, that I'm really not going to be able to add anything. Last season was our first season after returning to the Premier League and we were firmly rooted to the bottom until an amazing end of season rally that saw us safe. Starting this season with odds of 5,000 to 1. The cost of our squad being around £22M compared to someone like Manchester City at £280M. The amazing story of Jamie Vardy playing for Fleetwood in the non-league a couple of years ago and now looking like he could take the golden boot. Crazy to think that it would even be conceivable that we could win. Well, ha ha, I guess 5,000 to 1 inconceivable.

I have to be honest, my reaction was to spend most of Monday crying after I watched Chelsea hold Spurs to a draw that finally gave us the title. Disbelief and joy .... at least I was working from home. Working may be a stretch if I'm being honest, but hey .... this isn't likely to happen again (maybe famous last words).

The interesting thing is that there's been talk on the Premier League coverage here in the States about Hollywood spending time with Leicester to make a film about the Leicester story. Not sure how true that is and I've not heard anyone say exactly which studio it is that's interested, but presumably it will be made into a film at some point. Kind of like Cool Runnings or Eddie the Eagle except with the underdog actually winning.

What I find interesting is the concept of American studios trying to figure out how to make the best film about Leicester's triumph. You just know that some producer's going to be looking for ways to embellish it even further beyond the amazing story that it is. I look back to films like Robin Hood where they conveniently relocated Sherwood Forrest in relation to Nottingham and just wonder if someone's going to be asking questions like “has Leicester City always played in Leicester?” which, at first glance seems like a daft question, but given American sporting teams just pick up and move States, it's the sort of thing I can imagine them asking. “Well, I was thinking that if we based Leicester in London, we can make this great local rivalry with Tottenham and Chelsea. Maybe have them all located close to each other. It'll make it so much better as we can show Chelsea helping their friends ...” I don't know. Maybe I'm still drunk on the euphoria, but I'm sure that there will be considerable poetic license throughout the film. But I already know I'm going to be buying the box set, so I guess it's just a matter of waiting.

I suffered yet another suitcase failure on my travels. This trip to Seattle. Just to digress for a minute, I had lunch with colleague at this vogue restaurant and the waitress was very pretty in that very noticeable way ... skirt just a little too short, top see through and unbuttoned just a button too far and, let me say, with a large chest. She was very attentive to us and kept passing by our table to lean over an pour water. I guess it's not too difficult to pick out the two guys on expenses that can be worked for a bigger tip, lol.

Anyway, back to the story which is irrelevant, but another colleague offered to stop by and pick up some Duck Tape that I could use to fix my suitcase. Well, I don't blame him for this, but when he saw the Union Jack Duck Tape, he obviously bought it for me as shown below.



Well, the question that sticks in my head is what the hell would you use this tape for anyway? Is America planning to deck the country out in Union Jack Duck Tape in celebration of the Queen's 90th birthday?

Who knows? But I don't seem to have another use for it.

It's been debated for a long time that playing video games to excess can cause someone to lose the ability to tell between the game and reality. Those that propose this as being a big problem generally point to the violence in games and that it can cause people to want to do nasty things to other people including killing them. An alternative analogy is that playing driving games can cause someone to be reckless when driving in the real world. Even is not leading to accidents or worse, there are cases of those where playing games has cost them in the real world ... of note is the former Liverpool David James who had an addiction to PlayStation games.

So where is all this leading? Well, as most people know I've been playing Clash of Clans for quite a long time and, more recently, Clash Royale. Both of these games are heavily monetized by the maker SuperCell. In both games you spend real money to buy gems that you can then spend in game to progress faster. Without going into the mechanics of each game, Clash Royale allows you to use your gems to open chests and get cards faster as shown in the picture below.



So how can a simple tablet game affect you in reality?

Well first, I need to explain that this is purely an accident. I was at the NASCAR race in Las Vegas a couple of weeks ago with Owen and obviously it was so fascinating that neither of us could take our eyes off the track for a single moment. I really don't know how this happened, but I must have slipped, accidentally zoomed with my camera and hit the continuous shot button as I seem to have a whole series of photos not related to the race. Now clearly I would have deleted these photos immediately, but I couldn't help looking at this one ....



.... and thinking .... how many gems would it take to open that super magical chest?

For the fifth year running, I give you the best, the amazing, the brilliant ..... and still undefeated champion .... me!

This was by far and away the closest competition ever. Owen actually tried so I had some competition and, going into the last week, I was trailing by one point. But as with Owen's beloved Liverpool, we have to bring out the word “choke”. Two weeks ago, Owen had built up a 57 point lead and looked like a dead cert to win the competition, but poor performances in the last two weeks let it all slip. The leaderboard shows that I finally came through to win by 19 points.

Let's see what next year brings. I suppose the first question's going to be whether or not anyone else plays with me or if I'm going to be doing it alone. I don't much like this new format for the championship, but I have to admit that it made for an interesting last race of the season. I was supporting Harvick for the final, so a big shout out to him and congratulations on the championship.

This was supposed to be an entry in the photos section, but I only seem to have come away with two pictures. Probably enough to at least capture the essence of what was going on. So, whilst we were back in England, my parent booked William into a Karting session at Ancaster. I have to say that I was really impressed with the facility as it catered for a lot more than Karting - quad bikes and paintball to name a couple of other things.

Anyway, this was William's first go at proper karting. He was quite nervous in the first session, but seemed to get the hang of it quite quick for the second session.

I've just received a blast email to everyone in our office “will the woman who left her ring in the ladies bathroom see Caroline to get it back.”

Perhaps she wiped a bit hard and it fell off.

Well, it's Thanksgiving once again. A time to spend with your family and be thankful for all kinds of stuff. Sadly my family was taken from me by a tragic genetic accident ... but now is not the time to be dwell on that and miserable. Oh no, it's time to celebrate.

Not wanting to be a party pooper and not participate in the Thanksgiving festivities I've decided to go all out. I understand that it's traditional to have turkey with all the trimmings, so I've just got back from Target with my festive fare pictured below.



Now, I'm a bit worried that I'm not going to get the most out of Thanksgiving, so I've decided to come up with a strict schedule so that I don't lose any minute of the day. It has to be planned right down to the last detail in order to make sure that nothing goes wrong with the preparations and execution of the perfect dinner. Gordon Ramsey eat your heart out!

OK - here's my thought.

8:00 am ... ish ... maybe 9, maybe 10, who knows. Depends on what time the cat decides to wake me up. For argument's sake, let's go with 8:00. OK, so 8:00am get woken up by cat wanting breakfast.

8:01 am - get out of bed and go for a piss.

8:05 am - head downstairs in underpants and T-shirt.

8:06 am - feed cat.

8:07 am - realize it's Thanksgiving and time to celebrate. Start day with a Fosters aperitif and toast the day.

8:10 am - open second Fosters aperitif.

8:12 am - realize that at this pace we'll be drunk beyond recognition by lunchtime and will make a mess of the turkey dinner.

8:15 am - open third Fosters aperitif with a vow that this is the last one to go down without some kind of break, but secretly realize they're going down very smoothly.

8:30 am - sit on sofa and contemplate life, decide what activities to do during the day and scratch testicles.

9:30 am - wonder where the last hour went and why there are now five empty bottles on the side. I'm sure I made a vow of some description ... but as my ex-wife made clear, vows are optional and not to be taken seriously ...!

9:35 am - have I really been scratching my testicles for over an hour? I should probably get a shower.

9:40 am - turn on TV ... just watch a quick 30 minute program before getting a shower.

10:30 am - decide there's nothing on TV ... what, seriously? Another hour has gone! If I don't start doing something, the day will be gone. Really! How many bottles are on the side? There were only five a minute ago. OK - there's definitely only one thing to do ... stop counting the bottles.

10:35 am - turn on Xbox - surely there's a bunch of other sad muppets with nothing else to do. Yep .... millions!

12:30 pm - seriously, playing games is for losers ... how long have I been at it? Two hours ... not too bad. Shit, I need to upgrade something on my Clash of Clans account ... turn on iPad.

1:30 pm - OK, probably time to get something to eat - let's start the turkey preparation. Time for a quick drink first. WTF! Where have all the Fosters gone. I'm sure I bought more than that. OK, well it's time for the lunch anyway, so let's have Heineken to start, followed by a Heineken main course and perhaps a Newcastle desert.

2:00 pm - why am I sat in front of my computer trawling the internet for porn?

2:15 pm - what have they been feeding their dicks?

2:16 pm - that's not going to fit in there .... guess I'm wrong!

2:30 pm - OK - this is boring now .... should I have a wank (masturbate for you Americans)? Maybe I could do that and then have a shower.

2:35 pm - decide a wank's too much effort, turn on the TV again.

3:00 pm - desert - let's crack open that Newkie Brown! So ... why is it the Toon Army again? Away the lads! Why isn't there any proper football on the TV?

4:00 pm - meeow .... time to feed the cat again.

5:00 pm - guess there's still nothing on TV then ... there's no way it's got this late and I've not even got dressed yet. Well, no point being extravagant now, might as well defer that task until tomorrow.

6:00 pm - didn't I say I was going to turn off the TV? Hold on a minute, I still haven't eaten yet. I think there's a bag of crisps somewhere and some cheese ... oh and I've got a jar of peperoncini's somewhere. Right now there's nothing in the world that I want more than a peperoncini .... or five .... or maybe ten .... WTF, it's Thanksgiving I'm going to have as many as I want!

7:00 pm - this has been a really productive day! I've achieved everything I set out to do. Seriously, I've not wasted a day at all. Everything I've done has been really focused and has been driving to a solution and the world is really great and I love everybody and it's all fantastic .....

7:15 pm - I'm back in front of my computer. I still don't understand how that fit in there .... should I feel sorry for the woman or the donkey? In fairness, they both look really happy.

7:30 pm - well I'm too drunk now to have a wank so I'd better just chill out ... I know, let's listen to some music.

8:30 pm - decide that we need to listen to specific music to fit mood .... something melancholic but uplifting at the same time ... OK .... got it!

9:00 pm - time to turn up the volume as this song really hits the mark ... but what about the neighbors? I'm not going to be living here in a couple of weeks, so it's not my problem.

10:30 pm - time to watch a film ... turn on some sci-fi film of one description or other.

12:30 am - time for more music ....

2:30 am - I don't think another beer would be wise at this time ..... bed!

It's funny .... I'm so looking forward to this. There are going to be millions of Americans getting into meaningless arguments with their relatives and visiting people they really don't want to. The only thing I'm really confused about is why did I buy the Turkey dinner as I don't see it getting eaten at any point during the day. Maybe I'm wrong ... maybe I should video the turkey dinner.

And by giant coc, I am indeed referring to my giant/healer raid on Clash of Clans. Not entirely sure why I did this, but I created a video of one of my coc raids and posted it on YouTube. Think it was just one of those moments where it seemed like it's a good idea. It's actually more difficult than it seems to talk through the video and I do make a couple of interesting mistakes that I'll analyze and try to work on (in my real life) ... or as I go about my business (so to speak).

One thing I will say is to make sure you watch the video on high quality 360p as otherwise it's a bit blocky.

OK, so this may be one of those things where you needed to be there and the video below is not the best I have to be honest, but here's the story. I was over in the north bay at my Irish friends for their daughter's birthday. Now. Well, anyone who's been to Ireland will know that there's a law that all TVs must be kept on at all times. The times I've been over there with my dad and we've gone into a bar and the first thing they've done is apologized for the TV not being on and turned it on immediately. Which is unusual as my dad would prefer the TV not be on in the bar. Anyway, my friends being true Irish conform to the law and do indeed have their TV on at all times. Well at least until this muppet went over there with his new phone. After losing my phone in a lake when I was back in the UK, I replaced it with a new one that comes with a built in programmable IR. So, I programmed it to their TV and Satellite system. Then proceeded to turn the TV off round about every 10 minutes.

So, the guy who's house it is, isn't the most technical person in the world when it comes to TVs, computers and the like. However, the person that setup his TV was there as well. I still can't figure out how they didn't manage to find out that it was me that was turning the TV on and off, but they didn't. It was sort of one of those jokes that once I started, I couldn't get out of. At one point it got quite heated between the person who setup the TV and the owner as they were accusing him of now know what he was doing. In the middle of the evening, they decided to try and fix the TV. The video below is a short video of them trying to fix it, but it's a little dark I'll admit. They had a torch out trying to see what was at the back, fiddled with all the settings then completely unplugged everything and reset all the systems including re-tuning the Satellite system in an attempt to find out why it kept going off.



I did eventually tell them it was me, but that was at 1:30 in the morning when everyone had left. Thankfully everyone was too tired to thump me at the time so I managed to survive.